Run With You
by Jesse A. Harper
Summary: As far as Corey Matthews is concerned, nothing interesting ever happens in Green Bay, WI, and she has no problem with that. Boring is good. At least until her history class gets a substitute, and her normal world is upended. Now all she can do is run.
1. Chapter 1: Lessons In Insanity

**Run With You**

_You use to hide behind a wall  
The part of you nobody knows  
No one ever saw it  
And your flower deep down in the sea  
Full of colors deep indeed  
No one ever saw it before  
No one ever saw it before  
Your shines is leaving you alone  
_- **Brightly Shines** by Eiffel 65

"I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter." – Walt Disney

**Chapter One:**

**Lessons In Insanity**

_Running. She had to keep running. It was all she could do to keep running and not obey the urge to look back to make sure that she had lost the thing pursuing her._

_Because there was not a doubt in her mind that the second she did she'd find that it was still hot on her heels, wickedly sharp teeth bared into a fiendish grin as it followed the foolish human girl who thought that she could outrun a nightmare._

_The girl fought back the urge to allow an uncharacteristic whimper of fear emerge from her throat as she raced along the concrete pathways of her school, the rubber tread of her sneakers slapping loudly against the pavement as she ran. She didn't want to believe what she had seen, to admit that a creature that could only have come from a nightmare had been in her classroom._

_And she most definitely did not want to look back behind her. To look back would be the kiss of death, because she knew that she would see the __**thing**__ that was currently chasing her. That thing was far more terrifying than any creature dreamt up in a horror movie, namely because it was real. Right now, Freddy Kruger or Jason would be an infinitely more welcome sight, if only due to the fact that she knew they __**weren't**__ real._

_A shrill, inhuman screech split the air behind her, and the girl shuddered as she willed herself to run even faster. She didn't want to get caught, not by the thing that had all but told her that she would never live to see the sun rise. She knew that the creatures chasing her would never allow her to escape; after all, she had seen too much. They were going to kill her, and no force on this planet would be able to stop them._

_Gray eyes darted from side to side as the fleeing girl searched frantically for a means of escape, fear lending her much-needed speed as she bolted through the deserted walkways of the campus. She spotted a path veering off to her left, leading to where she knew the campus police and school administration office lay, and immediately followed it. Another one of the creatures stepped out from the shadows up ahead, effectively blocking her path and eliciting a foul curse from the hunted._

_With a defiant sneer creeping across her face as she glared daggers at the creatures, she ducked off of the concrete path and into the shrubbery lining the walkways. The girl tore through the bushes and trees with reckless abandon, her messenger bag banging painfully against the back of her legs with every step as she shoved branches out of her path. Maybe if she was insanely lucky one of the whippy branches would catch the things chasing her right across the face and deter them for a few moments._

_The girl hissed out a continuous litany of verbal abuse under her breath as she whipped around the corner of a building at top speed, the worn soles of her sneakers sliding across the dirt and gravel as she dug her feet into the soft soil and took off down an alleyway formed between two buildings. She was running blind, tearing through a portion of campus that she had never visited before in the futile hopes of losing the things that were currently out after her blood._

_She knew that if they ever caught her they would kill her. That much had been made clear right before she had run for her life, wanting nothing more than to escape the insanity in front of her._

_A furious snarl ripped its way out of the girl's throat as she came to the end of the alleyway, and skidded to a stop in front of the chain-link fence separating the corridor between the buildings from the dirt and grass field that served as a grazing area for the agriculture department's animals. It was a dead end!_

_Fear presented itself somewhere within her system as a leaden feeling sinking deep in her chest as she stared up at the eight-foot high fence. How in the world was she supposed to get over that?_

_A noise from the entrance of the corridor caught her attention and made the girl's decision for her. She didn't even bother to curse as she threw herself bodily at the obstacle, clambering up the metal links of the fence with a speed born purely out of the will to live and the stubborn determination that she wasn't going to lose._

_She wasn't going to die. Not here, not today._

_Muttering various curses directed at the sexual preferences of her pursuers, and those of their parents as well, the girl swung her legs over the top of the fence, wincing in pain as the sharp metal at the top dug deep into the palms of her hands, before she let herself drop to the ground with a soft thud. The soles of her shoes skidded slightly on the dry dirt as she fell to her hands and knees at the sudden imbalance before she straightened up and took off running once again. She knew that just jumping a fence wasn't going to deter the things after her in the least._

_After all, she had seen too much._

_A panicked, humorless laugh started to bubble up from within her throat at the sheer insanity of the situation, and the girl had to bite back on the urge, knowing that if she started to laugh she'd be as good as dead. She had just gone past a dark alleyway located between one of the barns holding the animals raised by the agricultures classes and the feed shed when a long arm snaked out of the shadows and seized her by the collar of her jacket, jerking the girl into the shadows with the arm's owner._

_Just when a panicked scream was about to tear its way from her throat (and damn the consequences), a long-fingered __**human**__ hand was clapped over her mouth, effectively cutting off the sound, as the girl was pressed up against the chest of the person holding her before they ducked back into the darkest recesses of the shadows. Her heart started to pound even faster as pure fear surged through her system before she was gripped tight in the person's arms as they pressed their backs against the rough wooden wall of the barn, the wind carrying the sounds of animals shuffling around inside the barn, and the chilling sounds of her inhuman pursuers searching the area for her._

"_Whatever you do, don't scream," a male voice whispered urgently in her ear as he held her close to him. "Not if you want to get out of this alive."_

* * *

**Two Weeks Previous:**

College is one of those places where learning is considered to be supreme, where thousands flock to each year and pay for the sole privilege to be allowed the honor of attending classes there. It's a shining beacon of knowledge and enlightenment, beckoning enticingly to multitudes of young people.

At least that's what it is ideally.

Right now, Corey Mathews was almost positive that it wasn't any different from high school, save for the fact that she was standing in a lecture hall filled with at least three hundred other freshmen. Paper airplanes were being launched across the room, teenage girls were sitting huddled in groups as they chatted and did their makeup, and several other individuals were texting furiously on their cell phones or jamming away on their iPods. There was absolutely no sign of the professor anywhere, and not one of the engaged students noticed the two girls standing up at the top of the tiered room.

The seventeen-year old stared at the scene before her for several seconds, her face set into a neutral mask, before she slowly turned back around to face her cousin, who looked somewhat appalled at the sight.

"Remind me again why we're forking over six grand per year for this?" she asked blandly as she cocked an eyebrow at the brunette, who shrugged and shook her head.

"Because we want to get diplomas and not work at Taco Bell for the rest of our lives?" Tessa suggested as she glanced over at the younger girl. Corey just sighed and rolled her eyes as she crossed her arms over her chest, shifting her stance slightly before she glanced back at the doorway that they had just entered.

"Ah, the wondrous world of University of Wisconsin," the younger girl drawled as she rolled her eyes. "Home to hundreds of idiotic frat boys and classes on how to brew your own beer. Talk about a stunning advertisement for quality education."

"… the Green Bay campus isn't the one where there's a class on how to brew your own beer," Tessa finally stated as she gave her cousin a long, scrutinizing look. "That's the Milwaukee campus. And besides, how do you even know that?"

Corey didn't respond, although the corners of her mouth did twitch upwards slightly into a small smile. Tessa let out an aggravated sigh as she brushed some of her hair out of her face and shook her head. There were just some moments when Corey absolutely drove her up the wall with her smart-ass attitude, but sometimes she actually had a point.

Only sometimes though. And she'd never let Corey know that, because then she'd be impossible to live with.

"Do you think we can ditch, you know, just for today?" Corey asked somewhat sarcastically before she lifted up her right hand and glanced down at the Coleman watch strapped around her wrist. "I mean, we're already over fifteen minutes late thanks to those jackasses hiding my books last period, and the teacher's not here…"

Tessa grinned as she reached over and patted Corey reassuringly on the back before reaching up and affectionately ruffling the teen's long reddish-blonde hair. Her cousin growled out a curse under her breath as she stepped away from Tessa and eyed her warily, raking her fingers through her hair, which was now sticking out at odd angles, in a vain effort to tame it. The nineteen-year old gave a little half-smile at the indignant expression on Corey's face before she adjusted her backpack.

"If we ditch class, Braden will kill us long before my mom and dad do," she stated wryly. Corey winced at this as she stared down at the long expanse of concrete steps before her like they were the stairway leading straight to Hell.

"And we both know that would suck out loud," she grumbled softly, her gray eyes scanning the classroom with what could only be weary acceptance. "Your brother has one sick mind, especially when his idea of a good prank is to put Britney Spears CDs into my stereo. The sad thing is I still don't know how he got them, much less where. So, shall we go find some seats?"

"I knew you'd come around eventually."

"Bite me."

"No thanks. I haven't had my rabies shot yet."

Corey arched an eyebrow slightly at that comment before a positively evil smirk crossed her features.

"Who said that it was just rabies?" she asked her cousin, who pretended to recoil in mock fear at the statement. "I could just be completely certifiable for all you know."

The friendly banter was interrupted by the excited gasp from a girl seated in an aisle about halfway down the stairs as she turned around and spotted the two other adolescents.

"Tessa, Corey!" she called out enthusiastically as she waved her hand above her head to indicate her position in the room, strands of her bobbed blonde hair falling into her eyes as she did so. "You guys made it!"

"Yeah, after we had to do a search and destroy mission of half of the biology classroom," Corey drawled irritably as she started down the flight of concrete steps towards her friend, rolling her eyes as she did so. "The bastards put my notebook and math book out in the hall trash can, and the only reason I was even able to find them was because Dr. Aldman spotted them when he went to throw something away out there while Tess and I were searching his classroom for the damned things. I swear, I'm putting my bag on my lab table right in front of me next time, or sitting on it, just so I can keep all of my crap where it belongs this time."

With a loud groan, she flopped down into the auditorium-style seating next to the girl and stared aimlessly up at the ceiling as she allowed the strap of her messenger bag to slide off of her shoulder. Tessa took the seat on Corey's other side, gently sliding the movable desk top up into its locked position so she could get straight to work once the teacher entered.

"Peter just needs to learn to leave you the hell alone," she pointed out as she pulled her backpack up to her legs and unzipped it, removing her binder from the canvas bag before setting it down on her desktop. "How juvenile is it for someone to carry around a grudge that they've been nursing since eighth grade?"

"Really juvenile," Liz offered as she looked over at Corey, who looked as though all of her energy had been drained from her. "Are you gonna be okay?"

"That depends. Is it Friday yet?"

"No, its still Wednesday," the blonde girl stated sympathetically, earning an aggravated groan from Corey as she brought a hand up to her face and clapped it over her eyes.

"Damn," she muttered before she nudged her gray messenger bag with the toe of her shoe, pushing it away from her legs slightly so she could have more room to sprawl out with her lanky frame. "Liz, could you do me a huge favor? Just shoot me now, please. If this is how the rest of the year is going to be, I think I'll be better off dead."

Tessa just rolled her eyes at the younger girl's dramatics, although she silently sympathized with Corey's plight as well.

"Corey, you've only been in college for a month and you're already raising the white flag?" she asked with a grin and a hint of incredulity in her voice, knowing that the slight dig at her cousin's pride would irritate the girl. Her efforts were rewarded as Corey gave a low snarl and sat up in her seat, gray eyes narrowed angrily at the hidden insinuation that she was giving up.

"Never!" she hissed defiantly. "It'll take a hell of a lot more than some stupid football players to make me quit. Besides, both my mom and dad would kick my ass six ways 'till Sunday if I never went to college!"

Tessa nodded slowly as she gave Corey a serious look, and a rueful grin flickered across the younger adolescent's face as she reached up and raked a hand through her hair. Liz arched an eyebrow as she shook her head and grinned before she decided that a change in conversation was needed. Tessa and Corey were close, practically sisters, and she had been friends with both of them for a long time. There were just some times when distractions were needed before conversations took a darker turn than necessary.

"So, you guys will never guess what I got yesterday," she began as she grinned broadly at the other girls. Corey arched an eyebrow as she shrugged off her jean jacket, fully revealing the blue fitted t-shirt that she wore underneath with the words 'You say crazy like it's a bad thing' plastered across the front, before she looked over at Liz.

"What did you get?" she asked with an expectant grin, knowing that her friend was going to tell them anyways. Liz appeared to bounce up and down excitedly in her seat for a few moments before she bent down and started to dig around in her backpack, babbling excitedly at top speed as she rummaged around. Corey and Tessa exchanged twin shrugs and 'what can you do?' looks.

"Soo… any bets on when the teacher's going to show up?" Tessa asked nonchalantly as she leaned back in her seat, while Corey reached into her messenger bag and hauled out her sketchbook. The girl arched a pale eyebrow at her cousin's question as she started sketching out the basic pose of a human body before offering a small smirk.

"Never?" she offered with a grin, earning a couple of sniggers from her cousin and friend.

"Bet you anything Mrs. Gadding shows up right when people start saying 'screw it, let's go'," Liz said seriously, her voice slightly muffled by her backpack. "My math teacher does that all the time."

"You math teacher also looks like Snape reincarnated," Corey pointed out seriously. "Hell, he even has an attitude to match. The only thing he's missing is the British accent. I keep expecting him to say 'Mr. Potter, what is a bezoar?' or 'Twenty points from Gryffindor!' or something like that when he starts giving all of us the stink eye!"

Tessa blinked before she burst into giggles, shaking her head as she did so. "I forgot you two have the same teacher."

"Don't. He's evil," Liz piped up as she pulled her head out of the dark abyss that was her backpack momentarily before she returned to digging around inside the canvas monstrosity, muttering something under her breath. Tessa just shook her head and gave a small sigh at her friend's actions while Corey worked on her sketch.

"You know, I always wonder how in the world you carry that thing around," she muttered as she watched Liz. "I tried picking your backpack up once and my arm almost fell off! How do you fit all of that crap in there?"

"It's bigger on the inside," was the smug reply, resulting in much eye-rolling from the other girls, accompanied by a loud groan from Corey. That was a common comment used when Liz wanted to be 'mysterious' about something, which was quite often. The funny thing was that sometimes when she said that it led to some really embarrassing situations, or it just didn't make sense.

Just when the blonde let out a triumphant 'Ah-hah!' as she found whatever it was that she was looking for, the door down at the bottom of the lecture hall burst open and a strange man dashed in, making a beeline for the teacher's podium in the middle of the room. Corey guessed that he couldn't have been too much older than some of the older students; he looked like he was in his early to mid-thirties at the most, and his choice in clothing was definitely… different. She'd never seen anyone wear sneakers with a suit before, especially a teacher, at least if this man was a teacher. A quick glance over in Tessa's direction showed that the other girl was just as puzzled as she was.

"Did they send over one of the T.A.s to teach the class or something?" the brunette asked quietly as she looked over at Corey, who merely shrugged in response as she watched the strange man shrug out of his brown overcoat and toss it onto the teacher's chair before he started to fiddle around with the computer on the desk. He looked excited as he dinked around with the controls to the digital projector up at the top of the room, strands of his messy, gelled brown hair falling into his face as he opened up the Power Point they had been going over the day before.

"Sure looks like it," she muttered back before she flashed a brief grin over at the other girl. "Who else would be bouncing around like a deranged chipmunk on a sugar high at the thought of teaching a bunch of college kids?"

"Probably someone who had absolutely no idea what they were getting into," Tessa suggested with a chuckle just as Liz emerged from digging around in her backpack, a DVD set clutched to her chest as her short blonde hair stuck out in practically every direction. She opened her mouth to say something, only to freeze as she caught sight of the man setting up the class presentation, her mouth opening and closing wordlessly several times before coherent thought seemed to return to her.

"HOLY SHIT!" she squawked as she reeled backwards in her seat, making Corey and Tessa both stare at the blonde like she had lost her mind as a good majority of the class all looked over at the three girls curiously. Corey noticed that their substitute teacher was also staring up at them, and gave a long-suffering sigh as she rolled her eyes before she gave him a small smile and shrugged, indicating that there was nothing to worry about.

"Spider," she said by way of explanation, raising her voice slightly so that her words would reach the man. A brief flicker of incredulity crossed the man's face at the excuse, and Corey decided to follow the wonderful words of wisdom once offered to her by her high-school teacher: fake it 'till you make it. With a frown, she looked down at the cement ground and stomped down hard on a stray piece of paper left behind by a previous class. The loud sound of the sole of her shoe meeting the concrete floor echoed throughout the lecture hall, and the teen looked up to grin sheepishly at their substitute.

"It's dead now."

The man gave all three of them a very long look, his face set into an unreadable expression, before it was replaced with a smile as he nodded at the three girls.

"Well now, that's good," he said, his words twisting on a somewhat unfamiliar manner due to his accent, and Corey straightened up in surprise as she stared at the man before a small smile crossed her features as she placed the accent. Their substitute was English! "I'm sure we wouldn't want it biting anyone now, do we?"

"Nope, could've been poisonous," Corey responded with a perfectly straight face, although she did manage to send Liz a warning look out of the corner of her eye as her friend opened her mouth to say something. The teacher arched an eyebrow at their actions, but didn't say anything as he turned back around and started fiddling around with the computer. Tessa waited until the man was suitably occupied before she turned around to face Liz, who looked like she was about to go into shock.

"What was that all about?" she asked seriously, a slight frown creeping across her face as she stared at the blonde. Liz appeared to gain her bearings as she shook her head, looked back down at their substitute, who was now scrawling his name onto the blackboard at the front of the room, and froze again.

"That's the Doctor," she finally said, awe lacing her tone, earning a confused look from Corey, and an arched eyebrow from Tessa.

"The Doctor, isn't he that guy on that show you're always talking about?" she queried. Liz nodded empathetically, not trusting her voice. Corey blinked once, and then stared at her friend before she let out a sigh and leaned back in her seat.

"So our sub looks like some British guy from a TV show?" she asked as she crossed her arms over her chest and arched an eyebrow questioningly. "Nice."

"It's called _Doctor Who,_ and I'm being serious!" Liz protested as she jabbed a finger down at the man, who had written out 'Dr. John Smith' on the blackboard while using some of the long-abandoned chalk in the tray to scrawl out the letters. "That's the Doctor! He's even using the same alias that he uses when he can't go by 'The Doctor'!"

Tessa cocked an eyebrow before she shook her head and let out a long sigh, reaching up and running a hand through her short brown bangs as she did so.

"It's a wonder they haven't locked you up yet," she muttered resignedly. Liz made an indignant noise in the back of her throat as she glared at the other girl.

"But its true!" she sputtered as she gestured wildly down in the direction of Dr. Smith, who for all intents and purposes appeared to be completely oblivious to their conversation. Corey stared at her friend skeptically for a few moments, a slight frown making its way across her face, before she glanced down at the blackboard and grinned. Tessa shook her head and let out a long sigh as she fiddled absent-mindedly with her mechanical pencil.

"Lizzy, you're living in a fantasy world," she scolded gently. Corey sniggered softly as Liz let out an indignant squawk at the nickname – which she absolutely hated – before she managed to regain her composure.

"No matter what anyone says, there is a way to get to your fantasy world," she stated with mock severity, somehow managing to look solemn. Corey managed to ruin the mood as she gave a sarcastic snort.

"And that way is rum," she whispered impishly, earning an annoyed glare from Liz.

"That's not funny," the blonde muttered as she crossed her arms over her chest and sulked. Corey and Tessa exchanged bemused looks at their friend's actions before Corey shrugged and returned to their previous line of conversation.

"Anyways, previous insane conversation aside, it looks more to me like his parents had a warped sense of humor," she stated seriously before she smirked at Liz. "And you say that I'm obsessed."

"That's because you're probably the only person I know who has an entire Latin exorcism chant memorized," Liz stated flatly as she rolled her eyes. "And don't try to change the subject. I know what I see."

Tessa gave a short laugh as she shook her head and chuckled.

"No she doesn't," she pointed out with a grin. "Believe me, I share a room with her, so I should know. If Corey ever did run into a demon or anything like that, she'd probably just mutter 'Christo' a bunch of times before running like hell."

"Damn straight," Corey muttered as she bent back over to work on her drawing again. "I'm not Dean Winchester, and I'm not suicidal."

Liz rolled her eyes upwards and mumbled something under her breath that sounded like either a plea to any nearby divine powers for the retention of her sanity, or a wholehearted disagreement to Corey's statement. Tessa smiled slightly as she flashed Corey a conspiratorial wink, indicating that she had successfully sidetracked Liz from her protests. Any further conversation between the three was interrupted as Dr. Smith started up the PowerPoint and spun around to face the class.

"Alright you lot, settle down. I'm Dr. John Smith, and I'll be your substitute for the next-" Dr. Smith hesitated for a second, frowned slightly as he mouthed something under his breath, and then brightened up as he returned his attention the class. "Two weeks, at the very least."

"What happened to Mrs. Gadding?" someone piped up at the very back of the room. Dr. Smith arched an eyebrow as he directed his gaze up to the top tier of the lecture hall before he flashed a brief look of sympathy towards the individual asking the question.

"As far as I know, she'd in the hospital," he said thoughtfully. "Didn't really tell me much, other than the fact that she was ill with… oh, what do you call it… that's right, Swine Flu!"

Shocked gasps erupted from half the class, and Corey let out a low groan as she shoved her sketchbook into her messenger bag and slumped back into her seat.

"Great… now the hypochondriacs are all going to go ballistic," she muttered dryly as she clapped a hand over her face. Liz and Tessa both nodded in agreement as frantic whispers flared into life all throughout the classroom. Dr. Smith appeared to be somewhat frustrated as he let out a sigh and muttered something under his breath before he straightened up and stared out at the class.

"There's no need for anyone to panic," he commented blandly, sounding almost as though he was resisting the urge to roll his eyes. "I'm almost certain that they scoured every inch of this classroom yesterday after that little tidbit of information was given out. So there is absolutely no need for any of you to panic, or try to skip out on class, or fake sick, although I don't really see why you would want to, since you're all paying to go here and if you miss enough classes you'll get kicked out…"

Corey cocked an eyebrow as their substitute started off on a long string of babble mostly centering around the fascination of college education. She gave a soft huff of disbelieving amusement as she looked over at Liz, who looked as though she was on the verge of having a fit of some kind, and Tessa, who looked mildly annoyed at the steady flow of babble.

"If he says 'kids these days have no appreciation for education', I am so out of here," Tessa grumbled as she propped her chin up on the heel of her hand. Corey chuckled at her cousin's statement as she straightened up and offered a faint grin.

"Somehow, I don't think that's gonna happen," she pointed out. "Not that that would be a **bad** thing. Although, I definitely think that our sub needs to cut back on the sugar. Talk about a major spazoid."

It was at around that moment Dr. Smith came to a stop on his 'lecture' on the values of a college education, paused for a moment as he glanced over at the information on the side projected up on the massive screen up at the front of the room, and then gave an enthusiastic grin . For a brief moment, Corey had the thought that when he smiled like that, it usually heralded an onslaught of bad things. That thought vanished as Dr. Smith launched into an incredibly detailed lecture on the Italian Renaissance, and the massive social and political changes that it wrought, and Corey suddenly found herself preoccupied with jotting down the notes.

Not a single one of the three hundred students sitting in the lecture hall noticed the silvery, pen-like device that sat innocently on the table next to the computer monitor, a bright blue light flashing up at the top in a sequence that only its creator could ever possibly understand.

* * *

Over the next several days, Corey soon came to the conclusion that Dr. Smith was possibly one of the best teachers that she had ever had. He not only knew his way backwards and forwards through history, but he also had hundreds of amusing anecdotes about various incidents for almost every topic that they discussed. He had a way of making the past come alive, making it real, tangible for everyone in the room. To put things simply, Dr. Smith made history class fun, especially since Mrs. Gadding had been one of those teachers who possessed a dry, nasal voice that droned on endlessly, renowned for unwillingly sending many of the occupants in the lecture hall off into the Land of Nod.

To be more precise, she practically made Professor Binns and his lectures on the Goblin Wars seem downright riveting in comparison.

Right now, Dr. Smith was going over the Industrial Revolution, and the numerous effects it had on countries worldwide. And he was making the entire lecture absolutely fascinating.

"So, thanks to Guttenberg's invention of the printing press, as well as the invention of the steam engine – quite a marvelous thing really if you think about it. I once knew this chap who was convinced that a steam engine actually ran on ghosts, of all things…" Dr. Smith trailed off as he blinked, apparently realizing that he had been going off-topic once again. "Anyways, the start of the Industrial Revolution came about with the mechanization of various trades, such as the paper mills, steam-powered looms, and other such things. Unfortunately, no one was particularly interested in the idea of recycling back then, so you lot can probably only imagine how nasty things got from the refuse produced by the factories. Can anyone tell me who were the worst offenders on the bit with the pollution?"

Corey, who had been hastily jotting down notes during the course of the lecture, absent-mindedly raised her hand up halfway, not looking up from her notebook as she did so. In all honesty, she didn't really realize that she had done it; it was more of a knee-jerk reaction from high school that she had adopted whenever a teacher asked a question.

"Ah, you there, up in the middle. What can you tell me?"

It took a few seconds for Corey to realize that Dr. Smith was talking to her, and she jerked her head up with a classic 'deer-in-the-headlights' expression on her face. The substitute offered her a knowing smile as he arched an eyebrow. Crap, she'd been caught.

"Umm… the paper mills?" she offered hesitantly with a somewhat sheepish grin. Dr. Smith made a 'go on' motion with his hand, and Corey rolled her eyes upwards when she heard Liz and Tessa start snickering at her embarrassment. Some help they were. Fighting the very strong urge to mutter 'traitors' under her breath, she took a deep breath and glanced down at the passage in her textbook before she spoke.

"The paper mills were the source of many of the toxins found in the rivers at the time mainly due to the chemicals they used to treat the mass-produced paper," the girl recited with a slight sigh. "And since the mills were always located next to rivers due to the massive amounts of water they needed for the production and treatment of the paper, as well as creating water or steam power to run the machinery, the rivers were also used as a convenient dumping ground for any unwanted by-products, such as the used chemicals and leftover paper pulp."

"Well said," Dr. Smith chirped brightly as he spun back around to face the screen at the front of the room and use the laser pointer her had somehow acquired last week to point at a copperplate image of one of the infamous paper mills. "Now then-"

Any further words on the subject were cut off as the bell signaling the end of class rang out, and the entire lecture hall erupted with a flurry of teenagers and young adults all packing up so that they could leave as soon as possible. Corey yelped as she was forced to duck in order to avoid being smacked in the face with the bottom of someone's backpack, and Liz snickered as she stuffed her book and binder into her own backpack.

"Heads up," she quipped brightly with a smirk, giving Corey more than enough cause (in her humble opinion) to roll her eyes upwards and let out an annoyed groan.

"Yeah, thanks for the warning by the way," she drawled sarcastically as she gave the older girl an exasperated look. Liz grinned as she hefted her backpack up onto her shoulders and reached over to ruffle Corey's hair affectionately.

"I aim to please," the blonde offered with a cheeky smirk. Well, at least until Tessa reached over and soundly smacked Liz upside the head. The blonde let out a loud yelp of pain as she spun around to glare indignantly at Tessa, who just shook her head and sighed.

"Alright you two," she admonished in a falsely weary tone, "Play nice now. And Liz, must you harass my cousin?"

"Well yeah, it's fun!" Liz chirped eagerly as she reached over once again and ruffled Corey's hair, earning a weary sigh from the lanky teen as she hooked an arm around Liz's neck and held her in a headlock. "Who else do I know who can flip a full-grown man over their shoulder?"

"Aoshi," Corey and Tessa both replied simultaneously, and Liz shook her head in response as best she could while still in a headlock.

"No offense Corey, but I think your jujitsu-"

"Judo," Corey corrected automatically.

"Whatever. Anyways, your teacher is completely nuts if he can do that. Not to mention the fact that he taught you how to do it too," the blonde offered with a smartass grin. Tessa made a low noise in the back of her throat as she jerked Liz out of Corey's grasp and gave her friend what could only be described as an 'Apocalyptic Noogie'. By the time Tessa was finished, and once Liz was done squalling as she squirmed about in a frantic attempt to get out of the brunette's iron grip, the other girl's short blonde hair stuck up in practically every direction. You could almost see the sparks dancing about on Liz's statically-charged hair.

All it took from Corey was to glance in the other girl's direction before she burst out laughing hysterically.

"Nice hair," she chortled. Liz scowled at her.

"Shut up."

"Sure thing, Naruto."

"I said shut up."

"Dude, you have a cat-fro!"

Liz let out a distinctly inhuman growl at this comment, which prompted further snickers from Corey as she grabbed her messenger bag from the ground and flung the strap over her shoulder. She glanced back over at Liz and smirked, her gray eyes shining with an impish light before she let the final verbal bomb drop.

"So, feeling 'charged' yet?"

Liz growled out a curse as she lunged for the younger girl, who nimbly ducked underneath her friend's outstretched arms and clambered over the row of seats to the aisle behind them. Her actions startled the blonde long enough for her to race over to the stairs and run up them. Once she had reached the top, she turned around and grinned cheekily down at Liz and Tessa, who were only now starting up the stairs. They were among the last ones to leave the classroom, but there were still a few people left behind in the room, Dr. Smith being one of them.

So, Corey decided that one more static-electricity inspired pun was in order before she left for the day.

"See ya tomorrow, Sparky," she quipped before she bolted out the door and headed for the school library, leaving Tessa behind to deal with an irate Liz. Approximately ten seconds later, Tessa came running out the same doors in a frantic attempt to get away from the fuming blonde herself.

Apparently she couldn't resist making a joke or two either.

Corey made it to the library and soon commandeered a spot at one of the open computer terminals. Midterms were next week, and she had a paper due for her English class. It involved a detailed review of _The Book Thief_, and the general symbolism found within the book. The good news was that she had about half of her paper already typed up. The bad news was that she still had to finish it.

Corey was almost positive that the sacrifice of her sanity would be required as well when she turned in the paper next week.

With a soft sigh the teenager pulled her MP3 player out of her backpack and slipped her headphones on before she inserted her jump drive into one of the ports on the computer and allowed the small device to boot up. While she was waiting, she turned on her player and set it on a loop for one of her favorite albums, _Burn Season_. Humming happily along with the music, Corey pulled out her copy of _The Book Thief_ and set to the annoying task of finishing up her paper.

They had been expected to select a certain aspect of the book, such as point of view, characterization, scene, setting, things like that, and write about it. Corey had decided that the best thing for her to do was point of view, if only by virtue of the fact that it was pretty weird. In all of the books that she'd ever read – and she read a **lot** – she'd never come across another author using Death as the narrator of a story while watching the protagonist. It was really kind of creepy, in a cool way.

She had been plugging away at the assignment for at least a good twenty minutes when someone very large and very muscular plopped down in the seat next to her, and Corey automatically tensed up as she glanced over at the person out of the corner of her eye. When she realized just exactly who it was, she let out a soft sigh before she returned her attention back to her computer screen. She really did _not_ need this right now.

And she definitely would not start banging her had against the table. To show weakness would just give this bastard an advantage.

"So, what's the psycho freak up to this week?" the boy – he was too much of an immature asshole to qualify as a man – sneered as he stared at Corey. The seventeen-year old schooled her features into an impassive mask as she continued to type away at her essay and focused on the music coming from her headphones instead. She was rudely interrupted when a large hand was thrust in front of her face, blocking her view of the screen. With a mental roll of her eyes, she hit the 'save' key and glanced over at the object of her irritation with a lazy look on her face.

"What do you want, Pete?" she drawled as she arched an eyebrow. The red-haired football player frowned at her tone, obviously expecting her to be defensive or angry, before he smirked arrogantly.

"I just suppose that I'm surprised to see you here without one of your bodyguards," he remarked scornfully. Corey's expression didn't change as she rolled her eyes upwards.

"And I'm absolutely stunned to see you here without any of your muscle-bound lackeys," she commented with a slight smirk when Pete twitched at the remark. "What happened, did they finally start questioning why their buddy was hell-bent on harassing a girl two years younger than him, and half his size?"

"Shut up."

"You first, junkless."

Pete clenched his hands so hard that the tendons stood out visibly, and Corey had to bite back the shit-eating grin that threatened to break over her face at the sight. It was amazing that it only took three words from her to absolutely piss Pete off. But it was to be expected; after all, she had been taking lessons in sarcasm from Dean Winchester for quite a while now, and he was pretty adept at pissing people off himself.

It was kind of sad though that one of her biggest role models aside from her parents was a fictional character.

"You need to learn to watch your mouth, bitch," Pete finally hissed, and Corey rolled her eyes yet again.

"There's stupid coming out of your mouth-hole again," she pointed out offhandedly as she returned her attention back to the computer screen in front of her. "Now why don't you go away and do something constructive, like kick puppies or whatever it is you do in your free time? Leave me alone, I've got homework to do."

The older boy opened his mouth to say something, only to be interrupted by a cold voice that would have made the Devil himself piss his pants in sheer terror.

"Peter Benson, how many times do Braden and I have to tell you to leave Corey alone?" Tessa hissed acidly as she stalked up to the football player, her pretty face twisted into an expression of unmistakable contempt. Corey inwardly flinched at the murderous expression on her cousin's face, and not-so-subtlety scooted her chair away from Pete so that the football player would be at the epicenter of the nuclear blast that was soon going to be directed his way. To give Pete credit, he only paled visibly in the face of the only woman that had ever threatened to castrate him with a melon baler the last time she had caught him harassing her younger cousin.

"No need to get your panties in a wad," he sneered as he hurriedly stood up and pushed his way out from between the two females, trying his best to not look like he was freaked out. "I was just about to leave."

"Damn right you were," Tessa growled warningly as she glared darkly at Pete. "Now leave, unless you want me telling my brother that I caught you within ten feet of Corey… again."

Pete managed to sneer at the shorter girl, but he still beat a hasty retreat nonetheless as he sauntered out of the library in an attempt to look like he wasn't running away. Corey watched him leave as she cocked an eyebrow before she looked over at her cousin and gave her a knowing smile.

"Feel better?" she asked patiently, and was rewarded with an irritated growl from Tess as she sank down in the seat next to her – the one opposite from where Pete had been seated.

"Only once I'm actually allowed to punch that smug asshole's face in," Tessa muttered darkly. "I don't know how you can be so calm when he comes up and tries to pull this crap with you."

"I'm calm because it pisses him off," Corey pointed out with a small smile. "And as satisfactory as it would be for me to flip Pete over my shoulder and into a pit full of rabid hedgehogs, I have to be the better person. So, verbal barbs are okay, but breaking his nose again is not."

"You still shouldn't have to put up with that kind of bullshit from him."

"I don't. I honestly hope that he drowns in a bucket of ferrets, but I try not to let him get to me."

"But-"

"Tessa, he managed to make me lose it once, and I'm never going to give him the satisfaction of doing it again," Corey stated seriously as she looked over at her cousin, a frown making its way across her face as her gray eyes darkened slightly at the memory before she returned her attention back to the computer screen. "Besides, Aoshi-sensei would have my head on a pike if he ever caught wind of me using what I know for something other than self-defense."

"And that would be a bad thing," Tessa agreed reluctantly. Corey sent her a look that plainly said 'no shit' before she picked up her copy of _The Book Thief_ and started paging through it, obviously looking for something.

"Yeah, it's definitely a bad idea to piss off the man who started my first lesson off by flipping my scrawny ass over his shoulder and into the wall," she retorted dryly with a slight roll of her eyes.

"I thought that it was his student teacher who did that."

"Nope, she just did it to me every day after the first day until I caught up with the rest of the class."

"Fun."

Corey surprised her cousin when she glanced over at her out of the corner of her eye and offered a knowing smirk.

"Y'know, actually, it is," she quipped brightly. Tessa merely stared at her for several long moments before she let out a low groan and slowly started to bang her forehead against the wooden surface of the table.

"Why me?" she moaned in mock exasperation. "What did I ever do to deserve this?"

"Probably assassinated someone in your past life."

"Gee, thanks. That makes me feel so much better now."

"That's what I'm here for."

Silence fell between the two girls as Corey returned to working on her essay, and Tessa bent over to rummage around in her backpack for one of her own assignments. The rapid clicking of a keyboard was the only sound that filled the quiet void between the two girls before a faint buzzing came from the pocket of Tessa's jacket. With a slight sigh, the nineteen-year old reached inside her jacket and pulled out her cell phone before flipping it open.

"Braden says that he's staying behind to work on class work until after six," the brunette commented wearily as she snapped the phone shut after reading her brother's text message. Corey glanced over at Tessa out of the corner of her eyes and offered a faint grin.

"Hey, that just means we have more time to get our homework done before we go home tonight," she suggested. "We'll even be able to watch _Supernatural_ tomorrow once we get back."

"Corey, it's on at ten."

"So? That's what TiVo's for."

Tessa let out a low groan and slowly smacked her forehead against the table once again, although the smirk on her face this time detracted from the dramatic act significantly.

By the time six o'clock finally rolled around, the sun had already set, and Tessa and Corey were both more than ready to leave the library. Corey had finished her book report about an hour after she had arrived in the library, as well as the fifteen math problems that her teacher had assigned her class to do that day. Yes, she was **that** bored. While Tessa waded her way through an English project (a completely different one than what Corey had to do), the younger girl occupied herself by surfing the Internet, mostly by looking up reference pictures for her drawings.

When Corey's cell phone rang, she and Tessa both jumped, having gotten used to the heavy silence that hung about in the library. The girl glanced at Braden's text message and grinned before she looked over at her cousin.

"Your brother's done with class and wants to know where we are," she said with a grin. Tessa rolled her eyes a she unceremoniously stuffed the worksheets that she had been filling out into her English textbook.

"Tell him the library, as usual," she grumbled good-naturedly. "I swear, sometimes that boy doesn't think."

Corey smirked as she typed in 'Tess says 'in the library', duh. We'll see you in a few' and hit send. Once this task was accomplished, she set about cleaning up her workspace and stuffing her own books and notes into her back pack, at least until she realized that she was missing something important.

"Hey Tess, have you seen my notebook?" she asked hesitantly as she looked around the library, almost as though she expected her notes to have grown legs and walked off somehow. The older girl quickly glanced around as well; a slight frown on her face, before dawning realization became evident on her features.

"Didn't you leave them on your desk in Dr. Smith's class?" she asked quietly, and Corey immediately paled before she reached up and clapped a hand over her face before dragging it down as she let out a low growl of irritation.

"Crap," she muttered as she glared down at nothing in particular. "Hey, I've gotta go run back to the classroom and grab my notes before one of the janitors makes off with them or something. I'll meet you and Braden in the parking lot, okay?"

Tessa nodded in agreement, and Corey flashed her cousin a grin before she shouldered her messenger bag and headed back over in the direction of her history classroom. There were fewer people wandering around the campus now since it was after dark, but there were still those with night classes walking around. The girl let out a soft sigh as she made her way across campus to her history classroom and mentally grumbled over the fact that she had been so occupied with teasing Liz that she had forgotten her notebook.

As tempting as it was to mutter 'idiot' under her breath in every language that she knew, Corey refrained from the action, if only because she knew that talking to yourself in public usually never went over very well.

With a roll of her eyes, the teen quietly pushed open one of the doors that led into the lecture hall and poked her head in to see if there was a class taking place. To her surprise, and luck, the room was dark, and no one was in the room. Corey grinned silently at her luck, and resisted the urge to start humming the theme to 'Mission Impossible' as she started down the stairs towards where she had been seated earlier. She didn't know why she was sneaking around in an empty classroom, but it was fun. If she really wanted to, she could pretend that she was accompanying Sam and Dean Winchester on a hunt of a haunted college campus and that they were looking for clues to-

WHAM!

Corey almost let out a yelp as she instinctively ducked down behind a row of seats and looked around the corner of one of them with wide eyes at the door down at the bottom of the lecture hall, and almost burst out laughing when she caught sight of the familiar lanky form of Dr. Smith striding out into the room after someone. That laughter died in her throat though when she actually saw what was accompanying him.

It looked like someone had combined a rougarou with an overgrown lizard, and it had nails that looked sharp enough to make even a pissed-off grizzly think twice about tangling with this thing. And something told Corey that there was no way in hell that this was a costume. It was too realistic, too tight. And those fangs the thing was sporting looked way too sharp to be fake.

"Again, I demand to know what you're doing here!" Dr. Smith snapped as he glared at the thing, his usually cheerful expression replaced by one of extreme anger and outrage. "Under the Shadow Proclamation, you are specifically forbidden from even landing on this planet, much less punching holes in reality just so you can bypass the rules!!"

"That is none of your business, Doctor," the lizard-thing hissed, its voice harsh and gravelly as it focused its day-glow yellow eyes on the teacher. "And you have broken those selfsame rules as well."

"Only because a huge gaping hole in the middle of the Void is rather hard to ignore," Dr. Smith retorted darkly. "And I was rather curious to see just who or what was so desperate to claw its way out of one dimension and into this one. I just never expected to find a Quisforth roaming around on an American college campus."

"Quisforth?" Corey mouthed quietly as her eyebrows drew together and she frowned in confusion before she peeked back down at the scene. This just kept getting weirder and weirder. The lizard-thing let out a low noise that sounded like some kind of growl, and the girl shifted slightly in her spot so she could get a little more comfortable and get a better look at what was going on without being spotted. Unfortunately, her movement sent an abandoned pen skittering across the concrete floor and down one of the stairs with a loud clatter. Corey cringed at the noise, and managed to bite back the curse that threatened to fall from her lips.

"Who's there?" Dr. Smith called out as he turned around to face the seats in the lecture hall. The lizard-thing also turned around to stare at her, its eyes narrowing at it focused its gaze right on her hiding place. Corey swallowed nervously as she stared right into the things slitted yellow eyes, and felt her stomach twist into a very uncomfortable knot as a chill ran through her entire body. Somehow, in the part of her brain that was still functioning on all cylinders, something screamed at her that she was looking a predator right in the eyes and that was a very **bad** thing.

Forgetting all about her notebook, Corey silently counted to three before she straightened up and bolted for the door, running into it full-force with a loud 'clang' and barreling outside into the cool night air. She silently prayed that it had been too dark for the substitute, or whatever was in there with him, to see anything other than a vague shape before she took off towards the library.

Once she reached the library, she stood outside for a few moments and tried to stop shaking as she went over what she had just seen. It was impossible, and yet there was also no way that it could have been fake either. Corey swallowed nervously as she glanced around her, gray eyes wide with fear, before she shook her anxiety off and headed in the direction of the parking lot as normally as she could.

There was no way in hell that she was hanging around there for a second longer than she had to.

* * *

_The sound of squealing breaks. The acrid stench of burning rubber. The tortured shriek of metal colliding with metal at high speeds._

_Blood._

_God, there was so much blood._

_A small hand gripping hers tightly as familiar gray eyes looked back at her with weary acceptance._

"_It's okay Corey. We'll be okay."_

Corey's eyes flew open as she jerked awake with a sharp gasp and shot up into a sitting position, her right hand flying up to rest over her heart as she sucked in deep, shuddering breaths. Sweat dripped down the sides of her face as she stared down at her covers and tried not to burst into tears as she had so many other nights after waking up from the same nightmare.

The worst part though was that it _wasn't_ just a nightmare. It was a memory too.

"Damn it," Corey hissed as she flopped back down on her bed and glanced over at the alarm clock that rested on top of the large dresser on the other side of the room. The clock's glowing blue numbers showed that it was after two in the morning, far too early for anyone sane to be awake. The girl let out a long sigh as she listened to the rhythmic snores that came from the bunk underneath her as Tessa snoozed away, and silently wished for once that she was as heavy of a sleeper as her cousin was.

Five years.

For just two words, it sure signified a hell of a lot more. In some ways, it was practically a lifetime ago, and in others it only seemed like it had happened not even a month ago.

Over five years ago she had been living a normal life in Kingsford, Michigan with her mom and dad. She had a twin brother, Danny, who she had loved more than life itself, and a cat. Her mom worked for a local law firm as a paralegal, and her dad taught chemistry at the local high school. All in all, her family was nothing special, but they had been tight-knit.

And all it had taken to rip them apart were a couple of drunk college students out driving around one Saturday night at the end of June.

Corey let out a low growl of irritation as she sat up and shook her head in an attempt to remove the morbid thoughts from her mind. The last thing she needed to do right now was brood. And she definitely did not want to think about what she had seen in the history classroom either. If she did, and if she tried to comprehend it at all, she'd probably go insane. For now, as far as she was concerned, it hadn't happened.

She hadn't mentioned what she had seen to either Braden or Tessa, and in all honesty, it was probably going to be a secret that she took to her grave. Aliens didn't exist, and monsters weren't real; well, at least ones of the non-human variety.

With a soft sigh, Corey lay beck down on her bed and closed her eyes, silently willing herself to fall back asleep. Something told her that tomorrow was going to be a _long_ day.

Unfortunately, every time she closed her eyes that night, she was haunted by images of what she had seen in the classroom. And every single time, the lizard thing kept getting closer.

* * *

Okay everyone, welcome to my first Doctor Who story. I've been working on this for the past four months and I was orginally going to post it after I finished the whole story. However, after a rather disasterous few weeks (those of you who have read my _Fullmetal Alchemist_ story 'What One May Never See' know what I'm talking about), I decided that I needed to post something. So, fun stuff will abound... well, it's not exactly _fun_ per say, at least not for Corey, but it is interesting.

This is my first time writing anything for Doctor Who, so if I get anything wrong, please feel free to tell me.


	2. Chapter 2: Nowhere To Hide

_And still you feel like the loneliness  
Is better replaced by this  
I don't believe it this way  
And I can see the fear in your eyes  
I've seen it materialize  
Growing stronger each day_

I could see it as you turned to stone  
Still clearly I can hear you say  
Don't leave, don't give up on me  
Two weeks and you ran away  
I remember don't lie to me  
You couldn't see that it was not that way  
Swear I never gave up on you

– **Two Weeks**, by All That Remains

"When you're up to your ass in alligators, today is the first day of the rest of your life." – Terry Pratchett

**Chapter Two:**

**Nowhere to Hide**

By the time she finally walked into her history classroom on Thursday afternoon, Corey was dead tired, and was fervently praying to any and all possible deities that might happen to be in the area that today was the day that Mrs. Gadding finally came back from her extended hospital visit. It took everything she had not to groan out loud when she saw that Dr. Smith was waiting by the podium as usual, and quietly sank into her usual seat next to Tessa. The girl placed her messenger bag on the floor next to her feet and shrugged off the slightly oversized jean jacket before she unbuttoned the slightly too-big red and blue plaid flannel shirt she was wearing, revealing the plain black t-shirt she had on underneath.

"Wake me up when he starts lecturing," she whispered to her cousin, who shot her a sympathetic look, before she put her head down on top of her folded arms and closed her eyes. Within seconds she was sound asleep. Liz cast a worried glance over at the younger girl before she looked over at Tessa, who nodded and mouthed the word 'nightmares' at her. The blonde girl let out a soft sigh as she reached over and gently brushed a few stray strands of hair out of Corey's face.

"How bad were they?" she asked softly. Tessa frowned slightly as she gave a half-hearted shrug in response.

"I don't know. She wouldn't tell me about them, but I'm gonna assume that they were pretty bad since she looked like a zombie when she came down for breakfast this morning," Tessa sighed as she reached up and ran a hand over her hair before she looked back over at her friend. "Even Braden was worried, even though he didn't say anything. It's been a long time since she's had a nightmare this bad, three years at least. From what I can see, she probably didn't sleep much at all last night."

Liz let out a sigh as she shook her head. "Poor kid. So, you gonna wake her up once Dr. Smith starts lecturing?"

"No. She needs the sleep. I'll wake her up once class is over and let her borrow my notes."

Having come to this decision, the two nineteen-year-olds turned around and faced the front of the room, and Tessa made sure to discretely place her binder in a standing position in front of her cousin's face so that the substitute couldn't see that the younger girl wasn't actually awake. Corey slept through most of the lecture, which focused mainly on the French Revolution, and when she did finally wake up, there was only ten minutes left of class.

With a low groan the teen sat up and rubbed at her eyes to wipe the gunk out of them before she looked blearily up at the projection screen. She blinked, and then turned around so she could look at Tessa.

"Tess, how long did you let me sleep?" she asked wearily as she fixed her cousin with an exasperated look. The older girl grinned before she thrust a small sheaf of papers into her hands.

"Most of class," she answered cheerfully. "You looked like you needed it. And no need to worry about the notes, 'cause I got them all written down. All you need to do is photocopy them or something and you're good."

Corey gave Tessa a flat look before she let out a long sigh and ran a hand through her hair in order to flatten down the bits that were in disarray from her impromptu nap. It was at that moment that the bell rang, resulting in the typical flurry of everyone getting packed up. Just when Corey was about to bend over and stuff the notes into her messenger bag, Dr. Smith's voice rang out above the chaos.

"Corey Matthews, could you come down front please? I think I have something that belongs to you."

The girl went dead white as her eyes widened and a look of complete and utter terror washed across her face for a few brief moments before she managed to adopt a neutral mask. Tessa looked over at her in concern, and Corey forced a grin onto her face as she gave a weak laugh.

"Well, now I know where my notebook went," she offered as she stood up and slung the strap of her messenger bag over her shoulder. "I'll meet up with you at the library once I'm done, okay?"

Her cousin nodded as she got ready to leave, and Corey looked back down in the direction of the podium and swallowed nervously. Why did she have a feeling of impending doom about this? The teen let out a shaky sigh as she waited for the classroom to clear out, and shifted slightly from foot to foot as she glanced longingly over her shoulder at the doors leading out of the classroom. She wanted nothing more to run like hell out those doors and not stop running for a _long_ time.

"Are you just going to stand there all day, or do you want your notes back?"

Corey jumped slightly as she spun around to face the substitute, and gave him a small smile as she started to make her way down the stairs while the last few people trailed out the doors. Trying her best not to look like she thought she was in trouble, she slowly approached the older man and reached up to brush her tawny-colored bangs out of her face.

"So you found my notebook," she asked, squashing the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach ruthlessly as she adopted a mask of relief. "Thank you so much. I was completely freaking out last night when I realized that I didn't have it."

Dr. Smith held out her binder, but didn't let go of it when Corey tried to take it from his hand as he stared at her closely.

"Yes, I imagine you probably were," he said thoughtfully. "Which is why you went and did what 99 percent of the human population would probably do when you went back to the last place that you remember having it to look for it."

Corey blinked and managed to catch herself before she flinched as she stared at her teacher. This was bad, really bad. He knew that she had been there last night. There was only one way to deal with this; lie. "Huh? What are you talking about? I didn't realize that my notes were gone until after I got home last night."

Dr. Smith cocked an eyebrow as he gave Corey a look that made her feel as though he could see straight through her, and the teen had a brief glimpse of something far older and more serious than anyone should ever be in the man's brown eyes. The girl let go of her notebook as though she had been burned as she took a step back, her grey eyes dilating in fear as something told her that she should start running and not stop until she hit the state line. And then, as quickly as the look had appeared, it was gone, and Corey no longer felt the very urgent need to run away screaming.

"Do you have any classes after this?" Dr. Smith suddenly asked nonchalantly as he held out her binder towards her once again, and this time allowed Corey to remove it from his hand. The teen gave him a wary look as she flipped open her messenger bag and stuffed her binder inside, not wanting to lose her notes a second time.

"Umm…" Corey knew that she had hesitated a moment too long when the substitute suddenly gave her a bright smile and placed a hand on the small of her back as he started to steer her in the direction of the door.

"I'll take that as a no then," he chirped. "Let's take a small detour to my office. I think we need to have a bit of a talk about what you saw in here last night."

"I didn't see anything!" the girl protested as she jerked away from the lanky man and started to back away, ready to run at a moment's notice. "I don't know what the hell you're talking about, but I never even set foot in this classroom last night!"

"You speak lies, human child."

Corey froze at the sound of the hissing voice that had haunted her dreams so badly the night before, hesitating slightly before she slowly turned around, not noticing the fact that Dr. Smith had tensed and was now staring behind her with a dark look on his face. The girl relaxed immediately when she saw that it was one of her classmates, Jen, standing behind her. She'd talked with the older girl a few times, and had found her to be pretty nice, if a little stand-offish sometimes.

"Jeez, Jen, don't sneak up on me like that," she chuckled as she flashed a brief grin at the other girl. "You nearly gave me a heart attack."

"Corey," Dr. Smith began warningly as he took a step forward as though he was about to place himself in between the two girls. "Get away from her, now."

"Huh?"

"Whatever you think she is, I can tell you right now that she's not that anymore," Dr. Smith stated seriously as he shot a withering glare in Jen's direction. Before Corey could ask just what in the world he meant by that, Jen let out a harsh, hissing laugh that sent chills down the girl's spine.

"I knew it. The watcher and the Doctor, both in the same room. You should have known that you couldn't hide from us for long," she sneered, and when she opened her eyes Corey saw that her eyes were now an acid yellow with a slit pupil.

Just like the eyes of the thing that had been in the classroom last night.

Any and all color that had been left in Corey's face drained as she stared at her classmate incredulously, her breaths coming in short, sharp gasps as she slowly started to back away. Dr. Smith lecturing her was now the furthest thing from her mind.

"No way, no way," she repeated shakily as she shook her head, her grip on the strap of her messenger bag tightening until her knuckles turned a bloodless white. "Th-that was just a dream, or a hallucination, or _something_. I mean, I've been watching too much _Supernatural_, and I'm dreaming now 'cause I'm still asleep and any moment Tessa's gonna poke me awake…" Corey's frantic babbling trailed off as Jen's nails extended, and she bared a set of inhumanly sharp teeth at her. A wave of cold realization washed over her, and the girl felt only numb acceptance as she stared at the thing that had been her classmate.

"Oh God," she whispered hoarsely as she took another step backwards. "You're real."

And with that, she whirled around and took off like a bat out of hell.

The girl didn't even waste the effort of swearing as she lunged for the doors at the bottom of the lecture hall, crashing bodily into the heavy metal panel in order to shove it open before she bolted down the hallway leading outside. An irate screech rang out behind her, and Corey somehow managed to put on even more speed as she found the idea of not dying to be a great incentive to run even faster. When she stumbled outside into the cold and windy evening, she crashed into about four other people that she recognized to also be in her class waiting outside the door. Corey opened her mouth to issue a warning about what was behind her, only to have the words die in her throat as her classmates' eyes all suddenly developed sickly yellow irises with slitted pupils.

"Holy hell," Corey groaned as she backpedaled a few steps, only to be jerked to a stop as one of the people, a man named Ian, grabbed her by the collar of her jacket and hauled her up close to his face before he sneered menacingly in her face, revealing a mouth full of needle-sharp teeth.

"Frightened, girl?" he hissed, and Corey made a loud gagging noise as she drew her head back slightly from the stench on his breath. It smelled like rotting meat.

"Dude, they invented mouthwash for a reason. Use it," she sniped back, her temper finally rising up and rearing its head as she glared daggers at Ian. She had often wondered what it would like to be a hunter, to run around kicking the asses of things that went bump in the night. Apparently someone up there had a really warped sense of humor, since it looked like one of her daydreams had just come true.

"Hold your tongue, whelp," Ian snarled as he shook her warningly and held up his claws in an obviously threatening gesture. "You're only hastening your own end."

Corey let herself go limp, seemingly cowed, before she looked up and flashed Ian what could only be described as a homicidal smirk. Before the older man could react, Corey drove her knee hard into his groin, causing him to release her. She swiftly twisted away and shoved him towards his fellow yellow-eyed friends before she took off like a shot.

"Sonofabitch!" she hissed as she ran, tearing across campus in an attempt to ditch her pursuers. Whatever the hell these things were, they were fast. Even with a head start they were almost on her, and some of them had ditched the illusion or whatever they were using to disguise themselves as humans.

What had started out as a quick dash to a good hiding spot soon turned into a drawn out chase over campus, and Corey found herself struggling to come up with ideas on how she could lure them away from the main portion of campus. These things were after her for a reason, and there was no way in hell that she'd drag someone else into her mess.

That being said, she needed to find a place to hole up and figure out a plan of action before she took care of these things.

With that thought in mind, Corey took off in the direction of the agriculture department. Maybe, if worst came to worst, she could get one of the cows to sit on her attackers.

* * *

When someone's hand had darted out of the shadows between the barn and the feed shed and dragged her out of the cold and windy dusk into the even deeper darkness, Corey nearly had a heart attack. She was about to bite down with everything she had on the dumb SOB's hand before she used her judo training to flip him over her shoulder when a familiar British-accented voice whispered urgently in her ear.

"Whatever you do, don't scream," Dr. Smith urged seriously. "Not if you want to get out of this alive."

The girl relaxed marginally in his grip, and the two waited until the lizard things passed them by before the substitute removed his hand from Corey's mouth.

"Next time, _please_ don't do that," she hissed as she stepped away from the lanky teacher and shot him a dirty look. "I'm already jumpy enough as it is, especially since someone decided that it would be insanely hysterical to turn my life into an episode of _Supernatural_. I damn near attacked you."

"Wouldn't be the first time," Dr. Smith replied with a nonchalant shrug, and Corey noted absentmindedly that he was wearing his brown trench coat once again. She frowned darkly at the man for a few seconds before she crossed her arms over her chest and gave him a dirty look.

"Alright then, just who exactly _are_ you?" she demanded sharply. "There's no way in **hell** that you're a teacher! Last night, you knew what those things were."

Dr. Smith blinked in surprise at her hostile attitude before he gave her a bright grin.

"Sorry," he said as he rocked back and forth in his spot slightly. "I'm the Doctor, I'm very clever."

For one second Corey thought that she had misheard, and gaped at the substitute for several seconds at the sheer insanity of his statement. She knew that she'd heard of someone going by that particular title from Liz once, but she couldn't remember the specifics, which drove her nuts. Then her brain finally managed to restart itself, and she felt a wave of irritation rise up within her.

"A doctor of what? Impersonating history teachers?" she growled irritably as she sent a lethal glare the older man's way. Dr. Smith, no, the Doctor, ignored the insulting tone in her voice as he looked thoughtful, completely abandoning the somewhat serious attitude that he had adopted over the previous two weeks while teaching their class.

"Technically the term preferred is 'professor'," he pointed out as he gave the annoyed girl a smile. "For some reason college instructors tend to get rather twitchy about that, although I have no idea why. No, I'm just the Doctor."

That nagging hint of recognition returned, and Corey gave a low groan as she reached up and began to massage the bridge of her nose. She was starting to get a headache from trying to think about what was going on.

"Okay, I'm going to ignore the fact that you're obviously nuts for a few seconds, and ask just what in the hell those lizard-things are," she finally grumbled. "I mean they look almost like rougarou on steroids, or the bastardized spawn of an iguana and a werewolf."

The Doctor gave her an odd look for the last comment.

"Quisforth look nothing like werewolves," he said seriously, and Corey fought the urge to roll her eyes as she looked at him.

"I'm not talking about the furry, overgrown wolf kind," she pointed out before she sighed, shook her head, and shoved her hands into her pockets. "Never mind. You wouldn't get it. So, these things are called Quisforth?"

"Yes. Nasty little buggers. They're carnivorous, so they'll eat pretty much everything," the Doctor said as he stared steadily at Corey, who frowned slightly and cocked an eyebrow. "They also know how to blend in with the local population fairly well, which makes them extremely hard to detect. You won't even know that they're here until they start breeding, which is what they usually do when they find a steady food supply."

"Breeding?" the girl asked nervously as a shiver ran down her spine. That did _not_ sound good. "What kind of breeding?"

"Try prolific breeders," the Doctor told her seriously. "Quisforth travel from planet to planet, searching for ones with an adequate food supply. Once they find a planet that suits their needs, they settle down and breed, and eat, and breed… until they've completely overrun the entire planet and devoured all of the native inhabitants. And then they either fight among themselves and kill each other off, or some of the smarter ones pack up and move off to find another planet to start the whole cycle over again. Think of them as intergalactic locusts. Or piranhas."

Corey blinked as she digested the information that she had just been given, and then promptly paled as she realized what it meant.

"Son of a bitch," she hissed as she agitatedly ran a hand down her face. "The world's population is about 6.8 billion people. We're a damn all-you-can-eat buffet to them." She ignored the Doctor's frown at her language choice as she scowled and stuffed her hands into the pockets of her jacket. "Great. Just what I needed to hear."

The Doctor looked at her speculatively for a moment as he arched an eyebrow slightly.

"That's impressive. Most humans your age don't know the current population of the planet," he observed offhandedly, and Corey gave a short laugh in response.

"I don't know it off the top of my head, I just remember reading it somewhere on the newspaper this morning. I have a pretty good memory, but I remember some of the randomest things sometimes," she said wryly before she realized just what the man that had been posing as her teacher for the past two weeks had said. "Wait a sec, you just said 'planets', right? So these things are aliens?" And then further comprehension dawned upon her, casing the teen to pale as she stared at the Doctor. "You just… referred to me as a human… and you excluded yourself from that category… shit."

Before the Doctor could do anything, Corey had shoved him away from her as hard as she could and bolted down the alleyway back towards the fence she had hopped earlier. If she had allowed herself the luxury of cursing, the very air around her would have turned blue from the sheer venom of the expletives currently racing through her mind as she raced across the open expanse of dirt and collided with the chain-link fence that separated her from relative safety and her newest problem. Letting a single, irate growl escape from the back of her throat, Corey hauled herself up the side of the fence for the second time in less than ten minutes and hopped down onto the ground on the other side. The teen staggered for a bit at the shock of dropping down almost eight feet before she quickly regained her balance and took off down the dirt path back towards the main part of the campus.

She had just hit one of the concrete paths when someone stepped out from around the corner and she barreled right into them, sending them both sprawling onto the ground. Corey was about to start swinging wildly at the individual, thinking that it was either the Doctor or one of the Quisforth, when a familiar voice hit her ears.

"Jeez Corey. Where's the fire?"

"Trey?!" Corey yelped as she quickly scrambled off of her friend and helped him to his feet. "What are you still doing here?"

"I could ask you the same question," Trey commented wryly as he brushed a shock of his dark brown hair out of his face and grinned at the girl. "Seriously though, what's the rush?"

Corey paled drastically as she reached out and gripped Trey by his shoulders before she looked him straight in the eyes.

"Trey, we've been friends for a long time, right?" she asked quietly, and the taller boy nodded hesitantly, as though he was unsure as to where she was going with this particular line of conversation. "And you trust me, right?"

"Yeah, I do."

"Good. Trey, you need to get off campus, now. Something really freaky is going on, and I don't know what it is, but you need to leave before something bad happens," Corey said seriously as she stared imploringly up at her friend. Surprisingly, Trey gently grasped her by the wrists and removed her hands from his shoulders before he gave the younger teen a disarming smile.

"What is it?" he asked simply. Corey looked up at the boy who she had been friends with since middle school, and had a small crush on in tenth grade, and opened her mouth to explain, only to slam it shut and let out a low groan as she caught sight of something she really didn't want to see over his shoulder.

"Too late," she muttered wearily as she pointed over at the group of Quisforth standing behind them, two of them sans their human disguises. "They're here."

Trey cocked an eyebrow curiously as he turned around, and frowned slightly when he caught sight of the – Corey hesitated to call them aliens, even after what Dr. Smith had told her – before he took a step forward. Corey yelped as she reached forward in an attempt to try and grab her friend before he reached back and effortlessly knocked the outstretched appendage away from him. The older boy stared at the two unveiled Quisforth for a few seconds, his expression blank, before he looked over his shoulder at Corey.

"Is this what you were trying to warn me about?" he asked quietly, and the girl offered him a weak chuckle as she nodded in agreement.

"Yeah, pretty much."

Trey nodded thoughtfully as he took another step forward, looking like he was either about to try and defend himself or parlay with the humanoid reptiles, and then whipped around to swing his right hand at her, his fingers curled inwards slightly as a feral gleam entered his eyes. The only thing that Corey saw was the blur of movement out of the corner of her eye, and she instinctively recoiled, bringing up her left shoulder and forearm to block the attack like she had been taught.

That movement probably saved her life.

Corey swore loudly as the set of razor-sharp claws that had suddenly erupted from Trey's fingertips slashed across her upper arm, just below her shoulder, effectively shredding the sleeve of her jacket and opening up a set of seeping gashes on her left arm. The girl stumbled backwards as she automatically reached up to grasp at the wound, her eyes wide with incredulous disbelief as she stared at her friend.

"Trey?" she asked hesitantly, a note of uncertainty in her voice as she gripped her arm tightly in an effort to stem the bleeding. The boy gave her a dispassionate look, revealing a set of acid-yellow eyes, before he brought up his bloodstained fingers and inspected the tips of the claws protruding from them closely.

"Pity," he drawled, a low hissing tone creeping into his voice as he stared blandly at Corey. "I was aiming for your throat."

Anything that could have ever possibly come to mind for her to say in retort died in her throat as Corey stared incredulously at the thing she had thought to be a friend only mere moments ago. She opened her mouth to say something, only to shut it after a few seconds when nothing came out. It was as though someone had rendered her mute. The girl's grey eyes dilated in a combination of shock and fear as she stumbled backwards, her breath coming in short, panicked gasps as her gaze darted back and forth between Trey and the rest of Quisforth.

"How?" she managed to croak out, a look of complete and utter betrayal flashing across her face. Trey – or was it the thing wearing Trey's face? – bared his inhumanly sharp teeth at her in a mocking parody of her friend's typical teasing smile.

"Why does it matter? You're going to die right here, right now, you worthless human meatsack."

Corey twitched slightly at the insult, and for the second time that day she felt her temper – something she had struggled so hard with to keep under control for the past three years – start to rear its ugly head. The seventeen-year old let out a low growl from the back of her throat, the sheer harshness of the animalistic sound ripping its way from her vocal cords startling even her, as she bared her teeth at her opponents before she straightened up and fixed the assembled Quisforth with a haughty look.

"You want to kill me, you stupid bastards?" she asked scornfully as she let out a short, derisive laugh before she spread out her arms, stubbornly ignoring the shooting pains from the gash on her left arm. "Take your best shot."

Having said her piece, Corey slid into the defensive stance that her teacher had practically beaten into her a long time ago, and gave the beings in front of her a chilling smile. The look in her eyes would have sent any sane man running away screaming; it was the look of someone who had nothing to lose, who welcomed the prospect of a fight.

It was also the look of someone who was completely and totally unhinged.

Before either party could move, a shrill, high-pitched whistle tore through the windy evening air, sending all of them to their knees as they clapped their hands over their ears in an effort to block out the sound. Corey swore that her ears were bleeding as she almost curled into a ball to escape the God-awful noise. It hurt too much to even begin to think straight, and just when she thought that her brain was about to start seeping out of her ears, the noise stopped.

Dazedly, Corey removed her hands from her ears and stared over at the pile of clearly agonized Quisforth, trying vainly to comprehend just what had happened, when someone grabbed her by her right forearm and gently hauled her to her feet.

"Up we go, there's the ticket," a familiar British-accented voice encouraged her through the dazed haze that seemed to fog up her brain. "If you can hear me, nod."

Corey managed to bob her head weakly, and immediately regretted it as her forehead and temples transformed into one big throbbing mass of pain. Her vision swam, and for one moment Corey thought that she was going to pass out as her knees buckled slightly. The only reason she didn't hit the pavement was due to the sole fact that the owner of the voice wouldn't let her.

"Oh no you don't!" the annoying voice declared as an arm somehow wound its way under her armpits and kept her upright. "Now then, come with me if you want to live. No, wait, that's the Terminator."

By this point, Corey had recovered enough to recognize that the voice belonged to Dr. Smith, no wait a sec, it was the Doctor. Wasn't that what he had told her his name was? The title though, it was really familiar. Where had she heard it before?

"Doctor… who?" she managed to croak out as realization suddenly graced her with its presence; the Doctor was a character from Liz's favorite TV show, _Doctor Who_. Corey let out a wry, depreciating chuckle as she shook her head, regretting it almost instantly afterwards as her vision blurred and twisted about once again. It had finally happened; she had gone insane.

"There will be time for questions later," the lanky man said seriously as he steadied her before he glanced behind him, only for the expression on his face to darken considerably. "Whatever you do, don't look back."

Corey, of course, chose that moment to look behind her in order to view the chaos that had ensued. What she saw almost made her throw up.

The thing that had been disguised as Trey still looked like him, only there were huge strips of bloodless skin hanging off of its frame as it struggled to get to its feet. The Quisforth bared its teeth at her angrily, its true form showing through in the several places where Trey's skin had apparently peeled away to reveal mottled green scales. The other Quisforth were hardly in any better position as the ones who had still retained a human disguise while chasing her around campus struggled to claw their way out of the strips of concealing flesh. It was at that moment that Corey realized that they had been wearing _flesh suits_.

Before she could give in to the incredibly strong urge to gag, the Doctor grabbed her right hand tightly. Corey looked up at him in confusion, still in a state of shock from what she had just witnessed, before the taller man gave her a cheerfully insane grin.

"Run!" he ordered as he took off like a shot, almost yanking Corey's arm out of its socket as she stumbled after him before she somehow managed to encourage her numb limbs to start working correctly again. By the time they reached Dr. Smith's temporary office, Corey was shaking visibly and her wide eyes had a distinctly unfocused look to them.

The Doctor took one look at the shaken teen and muttered something under his breath before he gently escorted her inside the small teacher's office, guiding Corey to a chair near to door before he started digging round in the pockets of his trench coat. When he finally found what he was looking for, he pulled out what looked like a first aid kit and set it down on the top of the desk

"Well now, why don't you let me take a look at your arm?" he asked kindly as he approached Corey. The girl looked up at the Time Lord, her expression eerily blank in comparison to how lively she normally was, before she slowly allowed her messenger bag to drop to the floor, soon followed by her bloodstained jacket and flannel button-down, leaving her clad in only her jeans and black t-shirt. Corey looked down at the ragged cut on the upper left sleeve of her discarded clothing where Trey had slashed at her, and let out a soft sound.

The Doctor gave her a long look as he pulled out an alcohol pad and started swabbing it across her injury, making Corey flinch as she sucked in a deep breath through gritted teeth at the sting inflicted by the alcohol. An awkward silence hung between the two for several long moments.

"Were those… _giant lizards_… that came out of those people?" Corey finally asked hesitantly, her tone soft as she kept her gaze focused down on the bland carpeting underneath her feet. The Doctor looked at her sympathetically before he responded, placing a gauze pad over the wound on her arm and taping it down as he did so.

"Technically those were the skins of humans, not actual people, but yes, yes they did," he admitted as he started wrapping a bandage around Corey's arm. "That's how the Quisforth blend in with the local population."

"Oh God. I… I had _classes_ with some of them," Corey whispered with a shudder before she reached up and agitatedly raked her tawny bangs out of her face. "They were just fine a few days ago!"

"Somehow I sincerely doubt that," the Doctor stated as he fastened the bandage and surveyed his work before he looked the girl right in the eyes. "Those people have been dead for at least a few weeks, if not longer. The Quisforth had probably already killed them before I even arrived."

Corey stared at him incredulously for a few seconds before she looked away and let out a low sigh.

"Is that what happened with Mrs. Gadding?" she asked softly. The Doctor shook his head as he replaced the first aid kit back in the pocket of his trench coat, although the pockets of the garment looked as though there was nothing in them.

"No, she truly is in the hospital for one reason or another. I just replaced the substitute teacher that you lot were supposed to receive, that's all."

Corey fell silent as she stared down at the ground, her loose hair falling into her face, before she clenched twin handfuls of her jeans tightly, her knuckles turning a bloodless white as a look of dark rage flashed across her features.

"How long have they been here?" she finally asked tightly, keeping her head lowered so that her hair shielded her face from the Doctor. She didn't need for the man to see the multitude of emotions flashing across her face as she tried to get her feelings under control. She didn't want or need him to see the almost psychotic rage in her eyes, or for him to ask what was wrong.

All she knew was that these things were going to leave this world shrieking in agony, and she was going to be the cause of their suffering.

The girl frowned faintly as another thought hit her. Just who and what exactly was the Doctor? If he had wanted to get rid of her, he would have let the Quisforth take care of her instead of going through all the trouble of rescuing her.

Corey was brought out of her morbid thoughts when a long-fingered hand suddenly grasped her chin gently and forced her to look up into a truly ancient pair of brown eyes. The Doctor frowned slightly as he stared at her intently for a few moments before he released her, allowing the now-thoroughly spooked teenager to scoot away before she stared back at him defiantly, the stubborn expression on her face daring him to say anything. When the man made no mention of the mercurial shifting of the emotions that had been on her face, Corey stood up and busied herself with pulling on her flannel button-down and jacket.

When she thought that the silence had gone on long enough, she looked up at the man stoically.

"These Quisforth things… how many of them are there?" the girl asked. The Doctor cocked an eyebrow as he stared at her steadily for a few seconds, apparently thinking about something.

"Why do you want to know?"

Corey gritted her teeth in an attempt to not shout at the man before she sucked in a deep breath and reached up to rake her hand through her bangs agitatedly.

"Because I want to know just how many of those things are out there running around!" she snapped tersely as she gestured wildly in the general direction of the door, fear and anger evident in her eyes. "I want to know if they've gone and replaced more of my friends, or any of my family members! I want to know who the hell I can _trust_!!"

"And what if there are more? What if one of the Quisforth has replaced one of your family members?" the Doctor asked seriously. "What will you do then?"

Corey's expression became positively glacial as she stared at the man who had posed as a history professor for her class, her eyes hardening as she straightened up and clenched her hands so hard that her fingernails dug deep into her palms.

"Then I will _personally_ see to it that I am the last thing that every single _one_ of those bastards ever fucking see," she snarled angrily. The Doctor looked taken aback at her vehemence before his expression became pensive as he scrutinized the tense girl in front of him.

"Do you know how to kill them?"

"No. But I'll find something that works." Corey gave the older man a humorless smirk before she let out a hollow chuckle. "Beheading usually seems to do the trick in most cases. And if that doesn't work, then I'll just have to get creative."

The Doctor stared at her for a very long time at that comment, an odd expression on his face. Corey stubbornly refused to say anything, even though there was the slight nagging thought in the back of her mind that she had just screwed up big time. She knew that she was a lot of things; she had one hell of a temper, and she was insanely protective of what remained of her family. Hell, she'd be the first to admit that she had some serious issues to deal with; mental **and** emotional. But on the list of all the things she was, crazy was not anywhere on there.

"There's nothing that I can say to get you leave, is there?" the Doctor finally asked, and Corey didn't even bother to repress the scathing snort that escaped from her.

"Not likely," she stated seriously as she shouldered her messenger bag and looked the older man dead in the eye, her expression grim. "Those scaly bastards killed one of my best friends. I'm not leaving here until they're **dead**."

Corey made as though to leave, only to be brought to a stop as the Doctor gently, but firmly, placed a hand on her shoulder to restrain her. Startled, the girl partially turned around to face him, freezing slightly when his grip shifted to just below her wrist. The older man stared at her for a few seconds, obviously thinking something over, before the serious expression was replaced with a more cheerful one.

"There are only six adult Quisforth here so far, but there will probably be more sometime soon," he said simply as he released Corey. "I haven't been able to locate their nest yet, but if my calculations are correct, the eggs should be hatching soon."

Corey blinked, surprised at the fact that the man had let her earlier statement drop so easily, before she let out a long sigh and rubbed the back of her neck. There was the beginnings of a headache starting to blossom between her eyes, but she didn't have the time to deal with it for the moment. If what the Doctor was saying was true, then they had only days, maybe even hours, before the Quisforth eggs started hatching.

"I take it that that's a bad thing?" she asked wryly as she stuffed her hands into the pockets of her jacket. The Doctor arched an eyebrow slightly as he fixed the teenager with a look that was almost impossible to decipher.

"Imagine at least three hundred Quisforth that are fully matured within a week," he stated flatly. Corey's eyes widened, and she promptly hissed out an obscenity as she ran a hand through her hair, any of her earlier self-confidence gone at the statement. The girl stood there for a few seconds, completely dumbfounded, before she finally managed to voice a statement that accurately summed up the extent of the problem they were faced with.

"Well crap."

* * *

It had taken a bit, but the Doctor had finally managed to explain everything concerning the Quisforth and why they had suddenly decided that Green Bay, Wisconsin was a good place to start an invasion. From what Corey had been able to pick up from the long line of techno-babble that the Doctor had spouted, the ship that that Quisforth had used to rip their way through reality had crashed only a few miles outside of town. Corey assumed that when the Doctor used the term 'reality', he meant that the aliens in question had breached the rules of the universe when entering a planet that was off-limits. Anyways, apparently that had been sometime near the end of September, right around the same time that a huge storm had blown in from Canada over Lake Michigan.

Corey remembered that particular storm vividly, seeing as she had spent a good portion of the night sitting on the window seat with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and watching the lightning and rain rage outside. And, in the morning, it had fallen to her and her cousins to clean up the mess left behind once everything was over. The broken tree branches and discarded leaves and pine needles scattered all around their front yard had taken them all day to clean up, and Braden had been the one in charge of stacking and cutting up the larger tree branches. To say that her cousin had not been happy with the chore was a severe understatement.

"You know, you're taking the idea of aliens rather well," the Doctor observed suddenly, abruptly snapping Corey out of her thoughts as they carefully picked their way across campus in the steadily deepening twilight. The girl glanced over at him and frowned slightly as she let out a long sigh before she reached up to fiddle with the small brass pendant that hung around her neck on a long leather cord, steadily ignoring the strands of hair that were whipped into her face by the cold breeze that heralded the approach of an autumn storm. Gray eyes looked off into the distance at the thick dark clouds rolling in towards them from the lake, calculating the amount of time it would take for the storm to arrive.

"We're probably going to want to hurry up with this. That storm looks like a nasty one, and it'll probably hit here in about an hour or so," Corey observed calmly before she shot the older man a sideways glance. "And by the way, once this whole thing is over, I'll probably be freaking out with the best of them, but right now I'm just gonna treat this as a dream. A very realistic dream where I and a lot of innocent people will die if I screw up instead of waking up in a cold sweat, but still a dream nonetheless."

The Doctor cocked an eyebrow curiously at her statement, watching the teen oddly for a few moments, before he spoke. "Why do you think this is a dream?"

"What else could it possibly be?" Corey asked rhetorically with a shrug. "I mean, c'mon, aliens? Little green men from Mars? ET? From what I can logically conclude, I have been watching way too many movies and TV shows, and it has now officially warped my brain." The girl gave a sardonic snort as she reached up to unconsciously rub at the spot on her arm where Trey had sliced into her earlier. "At least that's what the rational portion of my brain is saying. Along with the fact that I'm currently talking with David Tennant, of all people. The other part of me is currently screaming that I need to pull my head out of the sand and get my ass in gear before something even worse happens."

Corey jerked in surprise as the Doctor suddenly started laughing, and she eyed the man nervously for several long moments before she slowly started to back away, the thought that he was crazy briefly flashing through her mind. Just when the girl was about to seriously consider the option of telling valor to go screw itself and settle for running like blazes, the Doctor stopped laughing and gave her a cheerful grin.

"Oh, is that why you're so twitchy?" he asked brightly, earning a bewildered look from Corey.

"Huh?"

"You think that I'm not real."

Corey's jaw almost hit the pavement as she gaped incredulously at the man, her expression one of total disbelief, as well utter bewilderment. How in the hell had he figured that one out? She had just made a reference to an actor that she barely even knew of, at least outside of his one-time role in the fourth _Harry Potter_ movie. Liz was the one who should be dealing with this crap, she immediately decided, not her. _She_ was the one with all of the _Doctor Who_ know-how, she was the one who was obsessed with the show, she was the one who followed every episode and all of the actors in it, and she was the one who knew what the hell to do about all of this alien junk. Corey, on the other hand, had no _freaking_ clue about what she should be doing.

So far, the only thing that had come to her about getting rid of the Quisforth was to get her hands on a shotgun and to load up on the rock salt and silver rounds. The only problem with that idea was that she had never handled a gun before, and she had absolutely no clue whatsoever as to how she should go about obtaining one.

Which promptly led her straight back to square one; square one being 'What the hell should I do?', and 'holy shit, holy shit, that's a freaking _alien_'.

That being said, Corey decided that sarcasm was the best way to deal with her current situation, namely the chuckling Time Lord in front of her.

"Oh I know you're real alright," she retorted dryly as she rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest defiantly. "You almost yanked my arm out of its socket earlier, and figments of my imagination don't do that."

"But you don't want to believe it," the Doctor pointed out with a grin, giving the girl more than enough cause to clap her hand to her face and let out a loud groan.

"I don't believe it because I'm not the one who watches that stupid TV show!" Corey snapped irritably. "Liz is the one who knows everything! Actually, why don't you go bother her? I bet that she'd be more than happy to help."

The girl froze as she realized what she had just said, and promptly clenched her eyes shut as she hissed out a short list of profane suggestions at her own idiocy. The Doctor cocked an eyebrow as he waited for Corey to calm down, and gave the severely confused and frustrated teen a knowing smile once she had composed herself enough to open her eyes.

"And I suppose that this TV show that you're referring to is _Doctor Who_, correct?" he asked impishly, and his grin widened even further as Corey managed to sputter out something incoherent before she fell silent and stared at him wide-eyed. "Well, that would certainly explain your friend's reaction on the first day of class."

"How do you-? What-?" Corey stammered before she finally managed to force out something that made sense. "How?"

Oddly enough, the Doctor actually winced at the girl's question as he stuffed his hands deep into the pockets of his brown trench coat and averted his gaze slightly. Corey gave the man an odd look before a thought came to her, and she started to chuckle as she shook her head. The Doctor gave a muffled snort as he glanced over at Corey and looked as though he desperately wanted to roll his eyes, but was too dignified to do so.

"Let me just say that being tackled by a teenage girl that I have never met before in my life while outside a bookshop was a new and rather disturbing experience," he finally said. Corey blinked and stared at him before she smirked, letting out a little half-laugh as she shook her head.

"I would ask if it was Liz, but she's too restrained to do something that stupid," she muttered with a chuckle before she gave the Doctor a curious glance. "So, out of curiosity, why would you classify that as a new experience? I mean, I can understand the disturbing part, but you're an actor, aren't you? You should be used to fans doing weird things."

A look of complete and utter incredulity crossed the older man's face as he gaped at Corey before he reached over and grabbed her firmly by her shoulders, staring directly at her.

"Stop trying to pass this all off as just some dream!" he ordered gravely. "If you don't take this seriously, you and the people you care about could very well die. I am **not** an actor. I'm the Doctor."

"The Doctor is a fictional character created by a bunch of guys over in England, and from what Liz has told me maybe a thousand times, has been played by a bunch of different actors," Corey growled as she took a step back and tried to knock the Doctor's hands away. "He's **not** real. You are, but you're just somebody who thinks that he's some kind of-"

"I am **not** fictional," the Doctor growled as he gave Corey a hard look, causing the girl to quail in her shoes as she looked up at him with wide eyes. Corey very quickly decided that if this was what the Doctor looked like when he was only annoyed, she did not want to be anywhere in the general vicinity when he got pissed. Something told her that when the Doctor got angry, very bad things usually ended up happening.

That being said, Corey sucked in a deep breath as she slightly averted her gaze, trying to regain at least a few fragments of her composure before she returned her attention to the Time Lord.

"So, if you're really the Doctor, then how…?" she hedged nervously, not really wanting to say what was going through her mind. Right now, there was a small part of her that was wishing that she would wake up and find out that the whole thing had been one weird dream. The other part – the majority – had long since come to the conclusion that she had always wanted an adventure of some kind, and now she had one that had practically landed right in her lap. Therefore, screw caution.

The Doctor glanced over at Corey for a moment before he straightened up and let out a long sigh, giving the girl a somewhat weary look.

"There are different realities in the universe," he explained patiently in what Corey had privately dubbed his 'teacher voice'. "Each one of them is placed right next to each other, much like the pages of a book, only the number of different realities is infinite. Most of them only have little differences, like what would happen if you decided to take the lorry home from school instead of walking one day, or something like that. But some of them have huge differences, like entire events of history being altered." The Doctor paused for a second, obviously thinking about something, before he continued. "Or say, for example, an entire world where aliens do not exist outside of works of fiction. Think of them as gingerbread houses."

Corey eyed the older man with an expression that could only be classified as wary confusion before she voiced the question that had been rebounding incessantly in the back of her mind ever since the Doctor had mentioned tearing through reality earlier.

"So, if the Quisforth aren't originally from here, what will happen if we don't get rid of them?" she asked curiously. The Doctor frowned as he looked thoughtful for a second before he responded.

"Well, that might result in one of two things; either they'll breed and populate throughout the entirety of your universe, eating every living thing in sight, or, because of the existence of a non-native entity to this reality, this reality will merge with another," the Doctor mused as he pulled what looked like the tricked-out spawn of a flashlight and a pen out of his pocket and flicked it on, causing a bright blue light to appear on the end. "Of course, that's best-case scenario."

"Then what's the worst-case scenario?"

The Doctor looked over at Corey, and for one brief moment she caught sight of the same aged look in his eyes that she had glimpsed while back in the classroom earlier. It was just a disconcerting as it had been the first time she had seen it, although at least this time it didn't make her want to run away as fast as her legs could carry her. Corey found it kind of odd though, seeing as the Doctor looked like he couldn't have been any older than his mid-thirties at best.

The second the Doctor started speaking though, Corey was immediately snapped out of her thoughts as he voiced five words that chilled her to the bone.

"You don't want to know."

Corey hesitated for a moment before she turned around to look the Time Lord right in the eyes and crossed her arms over her chest, a stubborn glint entering her eyes as she stared him down.

"And why don't I want to know?" she asked seriously before her voice took on a sardonic, bitter tone as her gaze narrowed into a defiant glare. "Is it because I 'wouldn't understand', or that I'm 'just a kid'? Because I'm telling you right now, buddy, what I understand would blow your mind right out of the water."

"But you're not denying the fact that you're a child," the Doctor pointed out helpfully with a grin. Corey cocked a disbelieving eyebrow before she gave a wry snort and shook her head.

"I never said that I was," she admitted before she flashed the older man a brief grin. "Hell, I **know** that I look closer to fifteen than seventeen. I am still a kid in almost every sense of the word, but, I'm seventeen, not stupid. I know when someone's not telling me the truth because they're trying to 'spare my feelings' or 'protect me from the cruelty of the world' or some other rot like that. So spill; what's the worst-case scenario?"

The Doctor looked somewhat taken aback at Corey's rather brusque attitude, coupled with the fact that she had openly admitted that she was still a child in several ways, before he recovered his composure and launched into another explanation. Only, this time, it contained significantly less techno-babble.

"If the two universes merged, not only would it be disastrous for the inhabitants of both, but also the reality itself," he explained quickly. "There can't be two of the same people in a single reality for any extended period of time, otherwise that'll create a paradox. And that will result in a hole in the space-time continuum… about the size of Belgium. But only for that one person. So imagine that same result, only with hundreds of thousands of people."

Corey cringed as she thought about the very vivid picture that the Doctor painted. It was not a pleasant visual. The girl opened her mouth to say something, only to be cut off as two familiar voices called out her name in unison, one slightly deeper than the other. Corey spun around automatically, and her eyes widened as she stared at her cousins in shock as she spotted them running up to her.

"Braden? Tessa?" she asked weakly as she took a step away from the Doctor as her cousins reached them. "What are you guys doing here? Braden, I thought you had class until six."

"It got canceled," Braden said in a somewhat flippant manner as he stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jacket, some of his messy dark hair falling into his eyes. "So, what took you so long? Did you set a whoopee cushion off in class or something and got hauled off for a lecture? 'Cause an hour is a pretty damn long time to spend just talking about a lost binder."

Corey cocked an eyebrow and gave Tessa a long look before she pulled back the sleeve of her jacket to take a look at her sports watch. Her eyes widened slightly as she realized that it was indeed after five o'clock, showing that it had been over an hour since the Doctor had asked her to stay after class.

"You know, you two should probably take her and go home," the Doctor said suddenly to Braden and Tessa as he indicated to Corey. "It's late, and I'm sure that you have plenty that you want to do that doesn't involve school. So go home, eat dinner, sit in front of the telly, play with the dog, do whatever it is that you do in your free time, just as long as you go home."

Tessa looked absolutely confused at the sudden order from their teacher, while Braden eyed the older man suspiciously. Corey gaped at him incredulously before she glowered at the Time Lord, her expression accusing as she opened and closed her mouth wordlessly. Braden noticed the silent exchange between his younger cousin and her 'history teacher' and frowned before he gently put a hand on the girl's shoulder and maneuvered her off to the side. Having done that, he looked the Doctor right in the eyes and scowled, his expression hard.

"Okay, what did you do to her?" he growled warningly, his eyes narrowed as he ignored Corey's indignantly sputtered protests. The Doctor opened his mouth to respond, only for his eyes to widen slightly as he caught sight of something behind the boy. Before anyone could react, an irate shrieking howl split the air right before Braden was sent flying several feet by something massive and scaly tackling him.

Corey swore loudly as she stared at the Quisforth sitting on her cousin's back, effectively pinning him to the ground, while Tessa gaped at the alien, her face going dead white in a matter of seconds. This was bad.

And the situation was immediately sent spiraling straight into the depths of Hell when the Quisforth twisted around, grabbed Braden's hair to force him to jerk his head up, and positioned a razor-edged talon right over the twenty-year-old's throat.

"Give us the girl, Doctor, otherwise the boy dies," it hissed malevolently as it glared at the Time Lord with narrowed yellow eyes. Tessa let out a strangled whimper as she stared at the Quisforth holding her brother hostage, and the Doctor briefly placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder before he took a step forward, positioning himself between Tessa and the lone Quisforth. Neither one of them noticed that Corey had suddenly pulled a disappearing act.

"Well, you need to be specific," he chirped brightly as he faced the Quisforth, not even blinking when the rest of the Quisforth, all of them sans their flesh suits, materialized behind the one holding Braden hostage. "You see, you said that you want the girl, but you failed to mention which girl. There are hundreds of girls here on campus, maybe even thousands. So, I'm afraid that you'll have to be just a bit more specific when you state your demands."

The Quisforth let out an irritated snarl at the Doctor's words, obviously not amused by his evasive babble.

"Now, Doctor," it snapped tersely as it placed its claw right up next to Braden's jugular. "Or would you prefer to have even more innocent blood on your hands?"

Before the Doctor could give a response, a fist-sized rock flew out of the darkness and struck the alien right on the side of the head with incredible accuracy. The Quisforth let out a pained snarl as it jerked back and whipped its head around to face its assailant, and all eyes focused on Corey, who stood several yards away from Tessa and the Doctor with another rock in her hand, and murderous scowl upon her face.

"Hey! Hey, you want some white meat, bitch?!" she snarled before she threw the other rock right at the Quisforth threatening Braden, eliciting another angry growl. "I'm right here!"

Braden was immediately released as the aliens all focused their attention on Corey, who smirked at them and promptly flipped them all the bird. Enraged snarls erupted from all six of the Quisforth as Corey slowly started to back away, quickly shooting a meaningful glance at her cousins that practically screamed 'Get the hell out of here!', before the cocky mask slid back into place.

"You scaly sons of bitches want me? Well, you're gonna have to catch me first!" she hissed before she took off running, throwing one last jeering taunt over her shoulder as she went. "Chow time, you freaky bastards!! Yeah, that's right, bring it on baby, I taste _goooood_!"

Within seconds Corey and her pursuers had all disappeared, leaving Braden, Tessa, and the Doctor standing near the history building with almost identical shocked expressions on their faces. Tessa was the one who first broke the silence as she let out a faint sound that resembled the noise that a dog would make after having its tail trapped in a vice.

"What were those things?" she whispered fearfully before she turned her gaze to the Doctor, her hazel eyes wide. "And why did they call you the Doctor?"

* * *

**Reviews:**

RandomCheeses: Thanks. And yeah, I posted it as a bit of a Christmas present for my readers.

Lost Child of Gallifrey: Yeah, there will be a lot of those in this story. Corey likes the show, and she really identifies with Dean when it comes to wanting to do anything to save a sibling.

Gahoole15: Thank you, I'm glad that you're enjoying it. Hopefully I can keep him in character.


	3. Chapter 3: What Lies Beneath

_Now the dark begins to rise  
Save your breath it's far from over  
Leave the lost and dead behind  
Now's your chance to run for cover  
I don't want to change the world  
I just want to leave it colder  
Light the fuse and burn it up  
Take the path that leads to nowhere  
All is lost again, but I'm not giving in  
_- **I Will Not Bow** by Breaking Benjamin

"If you run, you might lose. If you don't run, you're guaranteed to lose." – Jesse Jackson

**Chapter Three:**

**What Lies Beneath**

"Dammit dammit dammit!" Corey hissed as she raced down the concrete pathways, making sure that she weaved back and forth on occasion to keep her pursuers guessing on where she would zigzag next. The last thing she needed right now was to have Trey or one of the other Quisforth decide that she needed another mouth right across her trachea. She happened to be quite fond of breathing, thank you **very** much.

The girl bit back a wave of slightly hysterical laughter that threatened to tumble from her mouth as she stumbled over a path of uneven pavement and almost fell flat on her face. Corey allowed a single profanity to fall from her lips as she hit the ground with her hands outstretched to keep from kissing the concrete and immediately rolled off to the side before she sprang back up to her feet, barely avoiding the set of sharp claws that embedded themselves into the very spot that her head had been not even two seconds earlier. A low growl emerged from her throat as she lashed out with her left foot at the Quisforth that had just tried to shred her, catching it right where the kneecap would be on a human, before she took off running once again, ignoring the loud howl of pain that echoed behind her.

The heavy metal doors of the science building loomed ahead of her, and Corey let out a soft grunt of pain as she almost hit them full-tilt, skidding to almost a stop just before she impacted with the doors. It still hurt, but it was considerably less than it would have been if she had hit the doors at ramming speed. Corey reached out and grabbed the door handle, wrenching the heavy door open and forcefully slamming it shut behind her right before the resounding clang of something very large and heavy impacting with the metal on the other side. The girl smirked briefly at the irate screeching that drifted through the door, accompanied by some very human-sounding curses, before she turned around and took off down the hallway, heading for one of the advanced chemistry labs.

If she wanted to keep these bastards away from her cousins, she needed to make sure that she ended this, permanently.

And if that process required the use of flammable materials, then so be it.

When she ducked inside the dark interior of one of the advanced chemistry classrooms though, she soon found that she wasn't as alone as she had thought herself to be as her eyes landed upon the lanky figure that was busy fiddling around with what looked like a scuba tank. Corey couldn't help the incredulous snort that escaped from her as she cocked an eyebrow, and the Doctor looked up from his work to turn around and look at her.

"Oh, fancy that. You're here," he said, genuinely surprised as he scrutinized the girl. "Am I correct in assuming that you've managed to lead our mutual friends somewhere in this direction?"

"Slammed the front door in their faces," Corey stated flatly as she looked at the Doctor askance before she voiced the question that had been bouncing around in her brain ever since she discovered that the Time Lord was in the room. "How do you do that?"

"Do what?"

"The whole 'disappear and then show up at the absolute worst moment two seconds later' bit. Not that I'm complaining right now, but it is kind of weird. I mean, I know that I left you behind with Tessa and Braden when I took off earlier like a pack of hellhounds were on my ass, and that was only five minutes ago."

The Doctor made a small noise of acknowledgement as he returned his attention to the scuba tank thing, and started to probe at it with the tricked out penlight that she had seen him using earlier. Corey let out a long sigh and rolled her eyes before she walked over to where the Doctor was working and sat down on one of the nearby desks, swinging her legs absently as she watched the older man fiddle with the tank. Several long seconds of silence stretched between them before she spoke again.

"So, what's the plan?" Corey asked as she cocked her head slightly to the side curiously, and grinned when the Doctor turned around to look at her.

"What makes you think that I have one?" he queried, although the maniac grin on his face indicated that he did indeed have one, and that he was tremendously enjoying that fact that she was asking him what she should do. Corey gave him one of her own shit-eating smirks in return as she leaned back slightly and shrugged with forced nonchalance.

"You just look like the man with the plan," she deadpanned, although the corner of her mouth twitched up slightly at the bad pun. This time the Doctor really did roll his eyes as he returned to his work, shaking his head as he muttered something under his breath. Corey caught the words 'humans' and 'teenagers', as well as the certain amount of exasperated amusement that both of them carried, and cocked an eyebrow as she grinned.

After the Doctor had finished his quiet mutterings and had added the final adjustments to the tank, he stood up and turned around to look at Corey. The girl looked at him meaningfully as she crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back slightly, her expression thoughtful, before a look of worry briefly flickered across her features.

"Are Tessa and Braden okay?" she asked softly, a dark emotion entering her eyes at the thought that she had possibly abandoned her cousins to what was probably a fate worse than death. Surprisingly, the Doctor just chuckled as he flashed her a reassuring smile before he reached out and ruffled Corey's hair. The girl gave him a flat look as she deliberately reached up and flattened down her hair, her expression a mixture of exasperation and annoyance.

"They'll be fine," the Doctor told her cheerfully as he took in Corey's disgruntled expression. "Not even the assembled hordes of Genghis Khan could get through the doors on the TARDIS, and believe me, they tried. Don't worry, your brother and sister will be perfectly safe until we're done."

Corey started as she blinked in surprise and gave the Doctor a bewildered look.

"What the heck is a TARDIS?" she asked as her eyebrows knitted together in blatant confusion before she frowned slightly. "And where on earth did you get the idea that Braden and Tessa are my siblings?"

The Doctor looked utterly taken aback at that particular tidbit of information and opened his mouth to respond, only to have Corey wave him off as she shoved herself off of the desk and approached the door to the classroom to make sure that it was secured. The teen used that opportunity to quickly swipe the sleeve of her jacket discretely across her eyes, allowing her long hair to fall into her face in order to disguise the action as she tried to swallow the lump that had suddenly appeared in her throat. She loved her cousins, really, she did, but there would never be a replacement of any kind for Danny… _ever_.

"Never mind, it's not important," she muttered offhandedly as she flipped the old-fashioned lock with a bit more force than necessary, securing the wooden door. It probably wouldn't hold up against too much if the Quisforth decided to use force, or even worse, their claws, but it was better than leaving the stupid thing unlocked. "So, what's the plan?"

The Doctor looked as though he wanted to say something, but then decided against it before he launched into an explanation detailing the purpose of the altered scuba tank.

"Quisforth, unfortunately, are rather tricky to dispose of if you don't have the appropriate tools at hand," the Doctor pointed out as he indicated to a spot on the floor right in the path of the door with his odd-looking penlight. "Help me move this over there, will you?"

Corey readily obliged as she threw her weight against the metal tank and slowly managed to scoot it across the tiled floor of the classroom, with the Doctor helping, to where he wanted it positioned. As she pushed, he kept up with the explanations.

"However, they are incredibly vulnerable to extreme temperatures, or to be more specific, extreme cold." Corey glanced over at the Doctor, who was now grinning like an idiot as he gestured over at the tank. "Which is where this comes in. If we freeze them fast enough, then we'll be able to remove them from this reality without too much trouble."

Corey stared at the Time Lord for a second before she gave a wry chuckle and shook her head, reaching up and running a hand through her bangs as she did so.

"Damn, and here I am, fresh out of carbonite," she quipped as she gave the older man a small grin. The Doctor arched an eyebrow at her sarcasm, and the girl let out a long sigh as she jerked her thumb to indicate meaningfully at the large tank. "Seriously though, what are you gonna do with this; make 'em keel over from overexposure to oxygen? Toss them in the lake after you've fitted them with cement block shoes and hope that it freezes over tonight? Because right now, I see absolutely no way that a scuba tank is gonna help us out here. As tempting of an idea as it is to deep six the bastards, somehow, I don't think that it'll work very well."

Silence hung between the two for several long moments as the Doctor stared at the girl intently, a rather odd expression on his face as he did so.

"Are you always this sarcastic, or is it reserved for me specially?" he finally asked. Corey cocked a disbelieving eyebrow as she crossed her arms over her chest and fixed the Doctor with a long look before she flashed him a sardonic grin.

"I'm always this sarcastic, especially when the world decides that it no longer wants to make sense," she informed him pointedly before she shifted straight back to the original topic. "But seriously, what's in the tank?"

"Liquid nitrogen."

Corey's eyes widened as she immediately looked back over at the metal tank, almost as though she expected it to blow at any second. A mixture of confusion, apprehension, and then finally smug satisfaction crossed the girl's face as she gave the Doctor a small smirk.

"Ice statues, huh?" she said, humor lacing her tone. "Sounds like a plan. Hard for someone to hurt anybody when they're frozen solid."

The Doctor opened his mouth to respond, only to stop as he directed his attention over at the door to the classroom, an odd look of concentration on his face. An angry hiss reverberated out in the hallway before the old wooden door exploded in a hail of splinters as the half-dozen Quisforth burst through the entryway. Corey paled slightly at the sight, although that was nothing compared to what she felt when one of the reptilian aliens straightened up and looked at her with wrathful eyes.

"Kill the human worm," it hissed acidly as it pointed at Corey with one of its razor-sharp claws. "And make sure that she feels every second of it. I'll deal with the Doctor."

"Sonofabitch," Corey whispered as she took a step backwards, completely missing the look of absolute rage that flashed across the Doctor's face at the Quisforth's casual disregard to human life. She didn't expect for him to suddenly grab her by the collar of her jacket and jerk her back away from the oncoming aliens. Nor did she expect him to unceremoniously shove her behind the teacher's desk before he raised the penlight and aimed it at the nitrogen tank.

"You might want to duck," he advised her offhandedly before he pressed down on the button on the device. Corey quickly complied with his request as she took cover behind the old and heavy-looking wooden desk just as a loud mechanical whine filled the air. Just as the whine increased to an almost unbearable pitch, the Doctor threw himself behind the desk as well and dragged Corey close to him.

It was then that all hell broke loose.

Something exploded, and a wave of freezing cold swept throughout the room, accompanied by shrill screeches of pain that were abruptly cut off. The Doctor made a small noise that sounded like one of annoyance in the back of his throat as he pulled Corey even closer as shattered metal that looked like it had come from the tank rained down to the ground, and then all was silent. Corey waited for a second before she looked over at the Doctor incredulously.

"You're insane," she finally stated flatly as she edged away from the older man.

"Certified on thirty-two planets," the Doctor informed her brightly, resulting in much eye-rolling from the teen as she extracted herself from underneath the desk and stood up, rubbing at the crick in her neck as she did so. She gave a sarcastic snort as she shook her head before she glanced over at the lanky man who was currently preoccupied with removing himself from the desk's confines.

"Yeah, well I think you can add another-" Corey was suddenly cut off as she registered a flash of color off to her right out of the corner of her eye a split second before a scaly hand wrapped itself around her throat and jerked her backwards. A strangled yelp escaped from her throat as she was unceremoniously pressed up against the chest of the sole unfrozen Quisforth, and the blood drained from her face as she felt the lethal whisper of razor-sharp claws trace over the bared skin of her throat.

How had they missed it? The Doctor had said that the nitrogen would have frozen all of them.

"Doctor!" the Quisforth snarled as it pressed its claws slightly into Corey's neck and pulled her close with its other hand, eliciting an incredibly foul profanity from the girl as she immediately tilted her head backwards and rose up slightly on her toes to keep from having her throat sliced open. "How dare you?!"

"How dare I what?" the Doctor asked cheerfully, causing Corey to feel more than a brief flicker of annoyance at his apparent lack of concern over the fact that she was dangerously close to having her trachea removed by a giant walking lizard. "I dare to do a lot of things, so I'm afraid that you'll have to be just a bit more specific."

A low growl rumbled from the Quisforth's throat as it bared its fangs at the Doctor, who looked completely unconcerned with the lone surviving alien that seemed to be fully intent on ripping both of them to pieces.

"Return my mate to me, and I _might_ just let you leave this room alive," the Quisforth snarled darkly as it pointed its tail over in the direction of one of its frozen – and obviously dead – fellows. Corey frowned slightly as she tried to place the grating rumble, and almost swore out loud as it came to her; it was the Quisforth who had worn Trey's skin. The girl almost growled herself as she fought back the very violent urge to horribly maim the thing that had killed her best friend and had the _gall_ to waltz around wearing his skin like it was an Armani suit.

"And what about the girl?"

The Quisforth merely sneered at the Doctor as it pressed one of its claws up against Corey's throat, breaking the skin and eliciting a pained hiss from the teen as a small droplet of blood welled up from where the tip of alien's claw had punctured her skin.

"She dies right here, right now, if you fail to acquiesce to my _request_," it growled threateningly as it stared at the Doctor. The Time Lord hesitated for a second, looking at Corey with an unfathomable expression on his face, before he averted his gaze from her and stared intently at one of the frozen Quisforth. Corey felt as though someone had just dumped ice water into her veins as she froze, her eyes widening and her mouth going dry as she gave the Doctor a look of absolute betrayal.

The girl bit back the hollow, depreciating laugh that threatened to emerge from her throat and hung her head, allowing her long bangs to fall into her face. Honestly, she shouldn't have been surprised. After all, it was easier to save your own skin than someone else's. Corey let out another pained hiss as she was forced to jerk her head upwards again as Trey – it was a heck of a lot easier than calling him Quisforth all the time – applied two more claws to her throat. A low keening noise escaped from her throat, and a look of rage flashed across her features as she struggled to keep herself from doing something stupid.

If there was one thing that Corey hated more than anything, it was being helpless.

Her thoughts were interrupted when Quisforth/Trey gave a scornful laugh and smirked as the Doctor turned back towards him.

"I have to say, I never imagined that threatening a mere human brat would be all that it took to bring the mighty Doctor to his knees," he sneered arrogantly as he continued to hold Corey –who was by now more than a little pissed off – immobile. "So the stories about you were true: so passionate, so sweet – you would never condemn an innocent child to death."

There was a long stretch of nerve-wracking silence as the Doctor stared intently at the Quisforth before he shifted slightly in his spot.

"Sweet, maybe… Passionate, I suppose…" the Doctor mused thoughtfully, looking almost bored, before he focused his attention on the reptilian alien and the tone of his voice became positively arctic as he raised his penlight – although, considering what Corey had seen him use it for, she was seriously questioning whether or not it actually _was_ a flashlight – up to point directly at Trey, staring directly at the alien with cold brown eyes. "But don't ever mistake that for nice."

Corey stared at him nervously for a second before a thought came to her, and she smirked thinly as she glanced over her shoulder at the Quisforth.

"Hey, when you killed Trey, did you take any of his memories or anything? If you can even do that, I mean," she asked quietly. The alien, momentarily unnerved by the expression on her face, drew back slightly before he let out a harsh, rasping laugh.

"Some of them," he growled. "Enough for me to pass as the whelp."

Surprisingly enough, Corey merely smirked at him, a slightly deranged glint entering her eyes as her tone became positively menacing. "And what about the memories of his friends?"

Trey looked startled by the question, and opened his mouth to respond after a few seconds of stunned silence. Before the Quisforth could answer, Corey reached up and grabbed the wrist of the hand with the claws over her throat, forcing it backwards at a very painful and awkward angle while simultaneously twisting around and forcefully driving her elbow straight into the reptilian being's stomach. Air rushed out of his mouth as the girl pivoted so that her shoulder collided with where the solar plexus would have been on a human man, and she seized the Quisforth's right arm before she performed a textbook judo throw that sent the alien sailing over her shoulder.

The Doctor stared at Corey incredulously as the teen straightened up, a wrathful light entering her eyes, before she stalked over to where Quisforth/Trey lay sprawled on the ground and placed her foot directly on his throat. She steadily applied pressure until the alien started to gasp, wrapping a clawed hand around her ankle in an attempt to get her to remove the obstruction to his air.

"You fucked up big time, pal," she snarled darkly as she glared at Quisforth/Trey. "You hurt my friend, you tried to kill me, and - worst of all - you threatened my cousins. In my book, that puts you somewhere between the dumb bastards who-" Corey cut herself off with a slight shake of her head, irritation flashing across her face as she realized that she had almost revealed something that she really didn't want this thing to know before she continued. "Right between Hitler and the caked-on shit that lines the walls of the local sewer."

"How creative," Trey sneered, only to have Corey scowl at him before she increased the pressure on his throat.

"Screw you."

Almost immediately, Corey knew that she had said the wrong thing as Trey stared up at her before his expression transformed into one that was positively demonic. Before she knew what was happening, Trey had planted a clawed foot directly onto her chest and _shoved_, sending the girl flying right into the Doctor. Both of them crashed to the ground in a heap, with the Doctor falling backwards into one of the frozen Quisforth and hitting it hard as he tried to not let Corey fall down on top of him. That started a chain reaction that could later only be described as purely catastrophic.

The frozen reptilian being slowly keeled over before it crashed solidly into the locked chemical cabinet behind it. Normally, this wouldn't have been a problem, seeing as all of the teachers in the science department were incredibly anal-retentive about locking up the chemicals in order to keep the less mature students from making off with them. However, the cabinet was not locked this time because the Doctor had been going through it earlier while looking for something to use to _persuade_ the Quisforth to leave. So, when something the size and weight of a full-grown male Quisforth crashing into the cabinet wouldn't normally do anything other than knock a few of the bottles around, this time it resulted in the cabinet doors swing open as several bottles full of various chemicals fell out of the storage cabinet's metal interior before shattering on the tile floor of the classroom.

As every student somewhat savvy to the general rules regarding the use of chemicals knows, it is a very bad idea to just randomly go around mixing chemicals, seeing as if you don't know what you're doing, something highly unwanted could happen. In this case, it was a combination of about three or four different chemicals mixing together to create a compound that, when put in contact with anything organic, would burst into flame. Three guesses as to what almost two hundred pounds of frozen Quisforth qualified as, and the first two do not count.

The only sign that anything was wrong was the soft hiss of the chemicals combining, followed by an acrid stench that the Doctor detected on accident as he sucked in a deep breath. Corey didn't know what had happened until the Doctor let loose a string of words that weren't even English, much less from Earth, before he bolted upright and forcefully hauled her away from the cabinet. It was a good thing that he did too, because that was right about when the frozen Quisforth burst into flames. The girl's eyes widened in a combination of fear and shock as she managed to get to her feet, half turning around in order to view the scene. As soon as the chemicals had ignited, they rapidly turned into a blazing inferno as the flames greedily devoured the alien corpse.

But the fire didn't stop there. The flames soon began to expand, taking hold on countertops that should have been fireproof, the wooden cabinets over the work area, and anything else that the spattered chemicals had soaked into.

Trey, who had been more occupied with tending to the frozen Quisforth that he had identified as his mate, didn't notice the steadily growing inferno. The Doctor, however, was definitely aware of the danger as he dragged Corey away from the chemical cabinet.

"We need to leave, now," he insisted urgently as he urged the stunned girl towards the gaping hole where the door had once been. "I don't fancy sticking around long enough for the flames to reach those other chemicals."

"But-"

"You can argue with me later."

"I'm not trying to argue," Corey protested as she allowed the Doctor to hustle her out of the classroom, trying her best not to cringe from the unmistakable, choking smell of burning flesh that permeated the air. "It's just… you told me that the Quisforth had eggs, right? Well if they do, then where are they?"

An irate howl that suddenly erupted from behind them answered the question, and both Corey and the Doctor spun around just in time to see Trey leave his mate's frozen remains behind as he lunged frantically for the door that lead down to the basement – and the boiler room. The enraged Quisforth wrenched the wooden door from its hinges and vanished down into the dark stairway, his long scaly tail whipping at the air behind him before it consequently disappeared as well. The Time Lord stared at the empty space that the door had once occupied, and Corey cocked a confused eyebrow as she allowed the Doctor to remove her fully from the area.

"I think we know where the eggs are now," she stated flatly as they reached the hallway and immediately broke into a run. The Doctor made a noise in the back of his throat that sounded like his version of 'duh', only more intelligent. The girl sighed in good-natured exasperation, although the expression quickly slipped off of her face as a thought hit her, and she let out a short, humorless laugh. The Doctor glanced back over his shoulder at the teenager that he was currently dragging along, and sent her a curious look.

"You know, I wonder if Trey knows that the chem. teacher stores all of the alcohol burners in the cabinet right next to the basement door," Corey stated as she flashed the older man a somewhat predatory grin, her tone indicating that she very much hoped that the alien was unaware of this particular fact.

"I sincerely doubt it," the Doctor told her as he continued to drag the girl down the hall. "Now allons-y!"

"Huh?" Corey managed to force out before she was abruptly jerked forward as the Doctor broke into a run, and she somehow managed to follow at a stumbling run of her own before she evened out her stride. By the time that they had fully exited the building, the flames had already gained a through foothold on the old chemistry building, and the ominous flicker of orange flames lit up the windy night.

Once they were a safe distance away, Corey removed her hand from the Doctor's grasp and pivoted around to look back at the now-doomed classroom, ignoring the older man's protests at her actions. Gray eyes widened in horror as the girl stared incredulously at the eerie flickering light that illuminated most of the windows in the chemistry building from where the fire had spread, and she shuddered visibly at the scene before her.

"Please don't let there be anyone in there," she whispered fervently under her breath, although she jumped when the Doctor came up behind her and gently placed a hand on her shoulder.

"We were the only ones in there," he pointed out quietly. "Now let's go. You need to get out of here before someone comes to investigate and sees you here."

Corey paused for a moment before she gave the Doctor a slightly annoyed look, glancing back over her shoulder at the chemistry building for a moment.

"… was that really necessary?" she asked dryly while quirking one of her eyebrows upwards. "Did you just **have** to blow up my school's science building?"

"Actually, it was a bit of a mistake. I wasn't expecting it, but it seems to have done the trick. Look on the bright side; all of the Quisforth are gone now," the Doctor pointed out cheerfully as he indicated to the now on-fire lab. The girl gave him an exasperated look as she rolled her eyes upwards.

"Oh, for the love of…" Corey muttered under her breath before she let out a soft sigh as she shook her head and turned away from the burning building, following him into the shadows as he headed back in the direction of the middle of campus. Silence hung between the two of them for several moments as they walked before the girl looked up at the Doctor and smiled faintly.

"So, I guess I should thank you for saving my life… or something," she finally said, flashing the older man a brief grin when he glanced back over in her direction.

"Don't. I get embarrassed. I go red; it's not pretty," the Doctor told her firmly, earning a wry smile and a raised eyebrow from Corey as she regarded him speculatively. The teen made a soft noise in the back of her throat as she reached up and quickly ran a hand through her hair.

"No chick flick moments, eh?" she asked dryly, humor lacing her tone as she stuffed her hands into her pockets to protect them from the chilly wind that was kicking up around them.

"Something like that."

The dry whisper of scales against concrete was the only warning that either one of them had before Corey was tackled bodily by Trey, who was hissing venomously at her as he roughly pinned the girl to the ground. Corey didn't even bother to swear as she struggled with everything she had to get the reptilian extraterrestrial off of her. The girl gritted her teeth as she clenched her right hand into a fist and swung hard at the Quisforth's face, managing to punch it right in the eye.

Almost instantly, a set of clawed hands wound around her throat and tightened as Trey hissed wordlessly at Corey, his face contorted into a grotesque mask of absolute fury. The teen did manage to force out a strangled curse this time as she swiped at the Quisforth, albeit ineffectively, earning even more eerie-sounding hisses from her opponent.

"Now that's not very nice!" the Doctor suddenly objected as he fumbled around inside his pocket for his sonic screwdriver. "She never said anything about your mother, so why should you insult hers?"

Corey's eyes narrowed as she stared up at the alien currently trying to choke the life out of her, and the death glare that she gave Trey was so venomous that it made him recoil slightly in shock. Somehow, the girl managed to swing her foot up with just enough momentum to land a solid kick to Trey's ribs, eliciting a pained howl from the reptile as he accidentally loosened his grip on her throat. A deep, feral-sounding growl tore its way from Corey's throat as she lunged upwards and struck Trey right on the snout with her open palm, making the creature let out a pained yelp as he reeled backwards. The palm strike was quickly followed by a vicious blow to the throat, which forced the Quisforth off of Corey.

The seventeen-year old quickly rolled out of the way from the gasping Trey and got to her feet, her grey eyes fixed intently on the alien as she slid into a defensive stance. Before Corey could do anything, the Doctor stepped in front of her, his sonic screwdriver out and ready.

"Alright now you two, enough of this," he ordered sternly before he fixed Trey with an intense look. "This is your last chance. Leave this world, now."

To his immense surprise the lizard-like alien merely let out a bone-chilling hiss of a laugh as it straightened up, his expression scornful as he glared at the Doctor. A chilling silence fell over the three, broken only by the steady crackling of the flames consuming the building behind them, before Trey fixed Corey with a baleful stare.

"Watch your back, human," he hissed as he bared his needle-sharp teeth at the girl, who had to struggle to keep her expression neutral. "You won't be rid of me _that_ easily. I'll be back, and when I return with more of my kind, I'll make you watch as I rip everything that you've ever loved to shreds."

Before either Corey or the Doctor could do anything, Trey launched himself up into the air and onto the fire escape on the side of one of the multi-level buildings, scrambling out of sight within seconds. The Doctor stared up at where the Quisforth had escaped, his expression tight as he muttered something inaudible under his breath before he looked over at Corey. The girl was staring almost unseeingly at where the Quisforth had disappeared, her eyes wide and her face pale as her lips moved soundlessly. The Doctor managed to make out the words 'no' and 'Danny' before Corey jerked out of her horrified trance and spun around to face him.

"Where are Tessa and Braden!" she demanded sharply as she stared at the Time Lord. "I need to find them, _now_!"

The Doctor gave the panicked girl in front of him an indescribable look, and Corey froze as she caught another glimpse of that truly ancient look in his eyes. In some ways it was absolutely terrifying, and yet it also seemed to be just another part of the man who had taken the time to rescue her.

"They're safe for the time being," he told Corey firmly as he grabbed her hand and proceeded drag her away from the fire, slipping effortlessly into the cover that the dark shadows between the buildings offered. "You on the other hand, have just managed to single-handedly paint a target on your back."

Corey's expression hardened as she averted her gaze, a dark scowl making its way across her face as she did so. "If you're talking about Trey, don't worry about it. I can handle him."

"Somehow, I sincerely doubt that," the Doctor stated pointedly. "Quisforth are infamous for their ability to hold a grudge. Once your new friend leaves this world and returns back to his own reality, he will do everything in his power to return here with reinforcements and slaughter everyone that you have ever cared about. And once he's finished with that, he'll torture you within an inch of your life before he finally kills you. And that's only if he's feeling merciful. After that, the rest of humanity can just say goodbye to their nice, normal lives as they get to deal with a Quisforth integration force."

Silence fell between the two awkwardly as Corey stared at the Doctor for several long moments, a look of terrified apprehension appearing on her face briefly before it was carefully and seamlessly hidden behind a bland mask of neutral interest.

"Wonderful," Corey finally drawled sarcastically as she pulled away from the older man and fixed him with a flat look. "Just what I always wanted: my own alien stalker."

The Doctor frowned as he gave the girl a disappointed stare. "You're not listening to me."

"No, I'm not," the girl stated flatly as she looked away and stuffed her hands into her pockets. "I can take care of myself."

"Oh I doubt that," the Doctor pointed out, cocking an eyebrow as he fixed Corey with a stern look. It took a great deal of nerve for her to remain standing where she was, and even more restraint to keep her mouth shut so she wouldn't say something incredibly stupid. She scowled mentally as she stared defiantly at the older man, even though on the inside she was about twenty different kinds of freaked out. If what the Doctor had just told her was right, she had just practically unleashed a vengeful homicidal maniac on her family, and this wasn't something that a call to the cops would fix.

Corey froze momentarily as realization hit her, and all of the blood immediately drained from her face. The Quisforth was currently wearing the skin of her best friend, who her aunt and uncle had always told was more than welcome at their home.

She was so completely _screwed_.

"I need to get home, _now_," she whispered hoarsely before she looked up at the Doctor. "Look, can you just tell me where my cousins are? We'll be out of your hair in no time, but we really need to go home."

"Why?"

The girl's eyebrows knitted together in momentary confusion before her expression changed into one of utter displeasure as she glared darkly at the Doctor.

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe because I just sent a raging psychopath after my aunt and uncle?!" she snarled acidly through gritted teeth, her hands clenched so hard that her fingernails were digging painfully into the skin of her palms. "If that bastard has **any** of Trey's memories, then he knows that my aunt and uncle will trust him immediately!"

The Doctor stared thoughtfully at Corey for a few seconds, and for one moment she thought that he was going to cock his head to the side just like the way Castiel would when he didn't quite understand what Dean was saying. If the Doctor did that, Corey swore up and down that she would nail him right in the kisser for being so damn calm when what was left of her family was being threatened. Any control that she had over her temper was rapidly dissolving, and to be quite honest, she didn't really give a damn. She'd learned a long time ago that it was a hell of a lot easier to deck someone and leave them down for the count when you're pissed off beyond all belief.

So, to say that she was shocked when the Doctor grabbed her by the wrist and took off at a dead run back in the direction of the history building was a serious understatement.

"What is it with you and running?" Corey managed to stammer out as she focused on keeping up with the older man, her other hand gripping the strap of her messenger bag tightly so it wouldn't fall off of her shoulder. The Doctor glanced over his shoulder at her and gave the girl a bright grin as they rounded the corner of the building and approached a thick screen of evergreen shrubs that lay pressed up against the far wall.

"Sometimes it gets you there faster, and sometimes it gets you away from whatever's chasing you," he stated cheerfully as he slowed down. Corey gave him a curious look while cocking an eyebrow questioningly, and the Doctor grinned maniacally at her in response. Before the confused girl could ask him just what exactly he was doing, the man dragged her along behind him into the small gap between the shrubbery and the brick wall.

Normally, the small space created at the corner would have been big enough for about two or three people to sit down with enough room to stretch out their legs, and as a result had become a popular spot for students to come and make out when they didn't want to be observed. However, the majority of that space was now occupied by what looked like a bright blue telephone booth – similar to one that Corey had once seen in a movie that took place in London, only the color was all wrong.

And now she and the Doctor were both crammed into a cramped space behind a bunch of prickly evergreen bushes, staring at an equally cramped-looking English phone booth.

"A telephone booth? You hid my cousins… in a telephone booth?" Corey finally asked incredulously, giving the Doctor a look that clearly suggested that she thought he had lost more than a few of his marbles. The lanky man looked somewhat offended; although Corey had the sneaking suspicion that it was all mostly an act.

"Actually, it's a police box, circa 1950. They were sometimes used to hold criminals, but they did have a telephone inside," the Doctor informed her cheerfully as he patted the painted wooden side of the structure fondly. "And this isn't just a police box, it's the TARDIS."

"The TARDIS?"

"My ship. It's how I got here."

Dead silence pervaded the little space for several long seconds before Corey gave the Doctor a flat look.

"O-kay, nice history lesson," she drawled dryly, the corners of her lips twitching up slightly as she gave the Doctor a look that indicated that she didn't believe him at all. "So your spaceship is a police box? That doesn't change the fact that it's really small."

Instead of appearing offended by Corey's rather blunt statement of the obvious, the Doctor only smiled knowingly as he opened the door.

"Just look inside."

Corey arched a disbelieving eyebrow before she shrugged and slowly walked inside the small box. Within seconds of her entering the structure, her eyes widened and her mouth fell open slightly in shock as she gazed around her. She was inside a gleaming machine, the walls looking like dulled golden metal and a metal grate covering the floor. There was a massive console set in the center of the room, with a small corridor leading away from what was most likely the control room. Massive struts that looked like they were made out of coral jutted up from the floor and connected with the ceiling, some of them forming little arches that one could easily hang something on down at ground level.

Only one thought came to mind to even possibly begin to describe the sight before her, and it slipped from the girl's lips as soon as it had registered itself as a conscious thought.

"Holy crow… this is… definitely not a telephone booth."

The Doctor shut the door behind him and leaned against the back wall, his lips twitching up into a somewhat smug grin as he watched Corey's stunned reaction with obvious amusement.

"So, what do you think?" he asked as he moved to stand behind Corey, silently counting down for something. The girl didn't even turn around to look at him as she looked around her in speechless amazement, her voice coming in a hesitant stammer.

"It's… it's…"

"Bigger on the inside?" the Doctor suggested with an impish grin, expecting to hear the same words that had been repeated so many times whenever he had brought someone inside the TARDIS. Instead, he received an entirely different answer.

"No," Corey stated as she gave a slight shake of her head before an enormous grin crept across her face, her eyes shining with an almost childish wonder. "It's _awesome_."

"Okay, you came, you saw, you gaped, can we go now?" a familiar voice griped irritably from off to the side, and Corey looked over to see Braden standing in the doorway that led off to the side, with an obviously dazed Tessa trailing along behind him. Corey's entire face lit up as she raced across the room towards her cousin and tackled him, wrapping the older boy in a rib-crushing hug as she let out a soft sigh of relief. Braden's stormy expression softened noticeably as he reached down and ran a hand over Corey's head, a look of understanding flashing through his eyes.

"You're okay," she said simply, and the dark-haired man nodded in agreement.

"Yeah, we're fine," he offered reassuringly. "A little scraped up, a little bruised, but still okay."

Tessa smiled at the sight of her normally stoic brother offering comfort, and quickly joined in on the group hug. And before the Doctor could cough nervously at the awkwardness of the 'domestics' taking place, all three of the cousins separated, with Braden giving Corey a teasing grin as he punched her lightly on the shoulder.

"What happened to the 'no chick-flick moments' rule?" he asked wryly. Corey just rolled her eyes and shook her head as she gave her cousin a sidelong glance and stuffed her hands into her pockets.

"It went right out the window when the aliens showed up," she proclaimed flatly. Braden twitched slightly at the term, and Tessa actually snickered softly at her brother's reaction. Corey cocked her head slightly to the side, unconsciously imitating a certain individual, before she gave Tessa a questioning look.

"Braden freaked out a bit when the Doctor stuffed us in here with no explanation and locked the door behind us," the older girl explained, earning an arched eyebrow from Corey as she turned around and gave the Doctor a deadpan stare. The Time Lord didn't say anything as he turned around and started fiddling around with the console, making something inside a massive green tube jutting out of the center of the control panel start pumping up and down slowly.

Corey shook her head and smiled faintly as she gave Tessa a look that plainly said 'what can you do?' before she glanced back over her shoulder at the Doctor. "You're looking for 2379, north Fenwood Drive."

"Brilliant." The simple statement is accompanied by the twisting of knobs, and the pushing of levers on the console, all at an impossible speed as the Doctor danced around the console, while Corey received twin incredulous stares from her cousins. The girl merely shrugged and grinned sheepishly at them, her expression telling the older members of her family that there was a hell of a lot more to the story than what she was telling them. All of a sudden the TARDIS sprung to life with a loud, wheezing noise that sounded somewhat akin to a large beast dying. There was only enough time for Braden to drop a startled profanity before the entire room started to shake uncontrollably, sending the three humans to the floor of the ship in a heap.

Tessa was smart enough to make it to the bucket seat near the console before she held onto it with a death grip, whereas Braden simply held on to one of the coral columns with a white-knuckled grip. Corey wasn't so lucky. She wasn't holding on to anything when the TARDIS suddenly tilted sideways, resulting in the girl going flying – at least until she hit one of the other coral columns located within the control room and latched onto it in a manner strangely reminiscent of a baby koala firmly attaching itself to its mother.

And then the turbulence started.

Corey was now sure that the pit of her stomach had officially relocated itself to somewhere around her ankles as she tried to prevent her lunch from making an unwanted reappearance. On the other hand, the Doctor seemed to be perfectly fine with the ship's shuddering and shaking, and continued to dance around the control panel like some kind of demented gerbil on crack, pulling various levers and pressing buttons as he went. For some strange reason, the thought made Corey giggle.

She was still trying to get her amusement under control when everything came to a stop, and the Doctor sprung away from the controls as Corey managed to stagger to her feet, looking slightly green. The man turned around to look at her impatiently, his trench coat still moving even as he skidded to a sudden halt.

"Well, aren't you coming?" he asked, and Corey immediately scrambled after him, leaving Tessa and Braden behind to follow after them once they were recovered. For some reason, she wasn't exactly surprised when she staggered outside on still-shaking legs to find that she was now in the far corner of her aunt and uncle's backyard. The girl stood there for a second, slightly stunned, before she took off at a run, barreling towards the back door at top speed.

Panicked expletives falling from her lips as she hastily pulled her key out of her jacket pocket and fumbled with the lock for a few moments, Corey inserted the key inside and swiftly unlocked the door. She yanked the wooden back door open, and was almost immediately bowled over by a shivering, whining German Shepherd that promptly attempted to tuck its head under her arm once it saw her lying prone on the ground. Sputtering indignantly, Corey managed to shove the dog away from her as she sat up and gave the animal a dry look.

"Knock it off, Dirk," she muttered as she got back up to her feet, pointedly ignoring the amused look that the Doctor was giving her at the canine's rather enthusiastic actions. However, when the shaking animal pressed himself up against her leg and practically tried to burrow under her skin, Corey looked down at him in bemusement.

"What's wrong, you big baby?" she asked gently, reaching down to scratch behind the massive black German Shepherd's ears. When he pointed his nose at the back door and let out a low growl, Corey paled slightly as she realized just what had set the normally stubborn animal off. Snarling out a frustrated curse, the girl charged into the kitchen and dashed towards the living room, the Doctor right on her heels.

When she reached the entrance to the living room, she skidded to a halt on the polished wooden floor, her eyes widening as she took in the sight of Trey – a very human Trey – sitting in a chair in front of her aunt and uncle, who were both huddled together on the couch looking like the end of the world had just arrived on their doorstep. None of them saw her, and she arrived just in time to hear Trey say something that made her very blood burn.

"I'm so sorry," he muttered as he reached forward to hold her aunt's hand gently, a look of contrite sympathy on his face. "There was just… there was this fire on campus, and Corey was trying to help someone out. The building collapsed… she never made it out…"

Trey's little monologue was interrupted by a choking sob from her aunt as the raven-haired woman buried her head in her hands and started sobbing. Her uncle looked over at his wife and placed a gentle hand on her back, looking like he wanted to follow her example. Deciding that she had seen more than enough, Corey let out a low growl of irritation before she strode into the room.

"Oh, you **wish**. _That_ has got to be the biggest pile of bullshit that I've ever heard," she stated tersely as she leveled a furious glare in Trey's direction, smirking grimly when the occupants of the room turned around to face her. "Hate to break it to you, but I'm not gonna die that easily."

When she caught sight of her uncle's expression, she softened her look slightly, offering her father's older brother an apologetic shrug by means of an explanation.

"Sorry, but he's lying," the girl said as she fixed Trey with a murderous glare, feeling a hint of satisfaction at the way the Quisforth's eyes widened when he looked at her. "Yeah, that's right. I caught your lying ass. Now get the fuck out of here, and get the hell away from my aunt and uncle."

Trey looked taken aback for a moment before he smirked eerily at her. "And what if I refuse?"

"Then I'll wipe the floor with you."

The Quisforth didn't even blink as he slowly rose from the chair that he had been seated in and grinned knowingly at her, his eyes momentarily flashing acid yellow before they returned to Trey's usual blue. Corey clenched her fist and was about to lunge forward at the alien when her uncle's voice tore her attention away from the Quisforth.

"Corey, just what on earth is going on?" the sandy-blonde-haired man asked softly, although the teenager could easily discern the hint of steel in his voice. Oh yeah, James Matthews was definitely not a happy camper. That was usually the same tone of voice he had right before he started yelling.

"Oh, it's nothing on earth," a familiar voice piped up cheerfully behind her, and Corey let out a soft sigh as she directed her gaze upwards, silently asking whatever celestial beings that so loved to screw with her life just what exactly she had done to deserve this.

"Doctor, why are you here?" she asked wearily as she glanced over her shoulder. The Doctor only grinned brightly at her in response, pointedly ignoring the threatening growl that was now rumbling out of Trey's throat.

"Are you asking why I exist, or why I'm here in this room?"

"Both."

"Well, y'see, when a man and a woman love each other very much…" the Doctor began, an amused look twinkling in his eyes as Corey let out a loud groan and smacked her forehead with the palm of her hand. Any retorts to his comment were cut off by Trey standing up abruptly from his seat and holding up his right hand in full view of all of the occupants in the room. Just as James was about to ask the 'boy' what he was doing, five razor-sharp nails erupted from his fingertips and he turned around to fix the elder Matthews' with a cold stare, all while giving the two adults a very good look at a pair of slitted yellow eyes.

"Shut up, Doctor," the Quisforth snarled harshly, baring his needle-sharp teeth at the lanky man. "Your endless prattling is getting on my nerves."

Andrea Matthews let out a startled gasp as she recoiled visibly from Trey, her green eyes widening in fear as she backed up against her husband, who was slightly less affected by the sight before him. He merely looked as though he wanted to punch out the thing sitting in his living room, disguised as the friend of their niece. Trey, noticing the man's tense expression, smirked at him, a look of malevolent pleasure crossing his face as Andrea backed away even further. Corey swallowed audibly as she stared at Trey, dimly aware of the fact that Dirk was going absolutely ballistic somewhere off in the background as he barked furiously at the intruder. For some reason, the Quisforth kept wincing at the dog's thunderous barking, but Dirk didn't charge forth like he normally would when he was acting this way.

"Get the out of this house," Corey finally ground out, making the decision that she needed to deal with this now, at least before things got any worse. "Get out, and never come back!"

"Aw, what's wrong Corey? Have I overstayed my welcome?" Trey sneered, his tone indicating that he thought she could do nothing to remove him until he was ready to leave. The girl didn't respond, although her right hand twitched slightly, almost as though she desperately wanted to punch something.

"Yes, you have," the Doctor stated firmly as he stepped up behind Corey and fixed Trey with a piercing look. "Under Article 15 of the Shadow Proclamation, I order you to leave this planet and never come back."

"Your words mean nothing to me, meddler," the Quisforth retorted smugly. "What are you going to do to me if I don't listen? Use your little toy on me again?"

There was a slightly maniac glint in the Doctor's eyes as he looked at the reptilian being before he grinned widely at Trey, easily flipping his sonic screwdriver up into the air before catching in his hand, the movement so fast that Corey almost didn't see it.

"What, you mean this?" he asked cheerfully as he whipped the device up and pressed down on the button, causing Trey to collapse in an agonized heap on the living room floor as he clawed frantically at his face, an ear-splitting howl ripping its way from his throat in the process.

Tessa and Braden, who had been absent the last time the Doctor had unmasked the Quisforth, both made faint noises of disgust in the back of their throats as they stood behind the Doctor and Corey, and their parents weren't much better off. Their mother was turning a very interesting shade of sea green, and their father looked like he was torn between throwing the reptile out the back door and tossing it into the lake. Surprisingly, the noise from the sonic wasn't hurting their ears like it had the last time, giving Corey cause to glance curiously over at the Doctor.

To her absolute bewilderment, the man was frowning slightly as he stared at Trey, his eyes narrowing as he glanced down at his sonic screwdriver. And then the laughter started.

It wasn't pleasant laughter, or even nervous laughter. It was the pure, unrelenting laughter of someone who had lost their mind, of someone who didn't give a damn about who they hurt as long as they eliminated the source of their pain. And Trey was the source of that insane, screeching laugh. Corey was seriously considering the option that Trey had just lost what little remained of his sanity when she realized that his insane gaze was fixed directly on her aunt and uncle.

For one single moment, time seemed to freeze as the girl stood frozen to the entryway of the living room, her gray eyes wide in disbelief as history threatened to repeat itself right in front of her. And then, before anyone could even register it, she was moving as fast as she could.

"Braden, get them out of here!" Corey snapped over her shoulder as she lunged forward and placed herself in between Trey and the two adults, her teeth gritted into a feral snarl as she glared defiantly at the Quisforth. "You touch my family, you overgrown, inbred excuse for a mutated lizard, and I swear to God that you'll die screaming."

"And what makes you think that you ever possibly be able to kill me?" Trey sneered as he staggered to his feet, the flesh on his face healing even as he spoke before he shot a smug look at the Doctor. "You little toy doesn't work on me anymore, _Doctor_. If this is the best that the last of the Time Lords can do against me, then-"

Whatever the Quisforth had been about to say was abruptly cut off as Corey's booted foot slammed right into his face, sending Trey careening backwards as the girl landed somewhat awkwardly on the wooden floor, a wry grin on her face as she shook out her right leg ruefully.

"Damn, a flying kick's not nearly as easy to do as they make it look on TV," she commented absentmindedly to no one in particular, ignoring the pained sputtering coming from the spot where Trey had collapsed. The sheepish smile almost immediately transformed into something far more dangerous as she focused her attention on the Quisforth, who was staggering to his feet right in front of the doorway to the living room. Before Trey could react, Corey slammed into him, sending the alien stumbling out of the living room and into the dining room.

James Matthews chose that exact moment to come up behind the reptilian alien and wrap his arm around Trey's neck in a painful chokehold before he forcefully hauled the Quisforth out of the room and bodily threw him outside through the back door – which Braden was so kindly holding open so his father wouldn't break the wooden door with Trey's head. Trey's rather unkind exit was punctuated by James snatching a cast-iron skillet off of the kitchen counter and hurling it at his head, which bounced off of his skull with a very painful-sounding 'clang', leaving the alien reeling as he sat down hard in the dirt just outside the door.

"And don't ever come back!" James snarled acidly before he slammed the door shut in Trey's face. There was dead silence in the house as everyone grouped in the kitchen to hear the venomously snarled curses and death threats – all of them in another language – before the noises disappeared, presumably because Trey had chosen to leave the premises for the time being in favor of _not_ being violently maimed by a short-tempered former hockey player.

Corey stared at her uncle for a few moments before she gave the older man a large grin, her expression lighting up proudly as she gave him a thumbs-up. "Way to go Uncle James. You sure showed him."

"I just wanted the bastard out of my house," he growled irritably as he reached up and ran a hand over his short hair. "No one threatens my family and gets away with it. And he better hope to whatever he believes in that he didn't break one of my good cast-iron skillets with his thick skull, because if he did, he'll have a hell of a lot more to worry about than just a concussion."

"Yeah, the wrath of Dad, which is scarier than the wrath of God any day," Braden piped up as he flipped the lock on the door before he shot his father a significant look. The older man cocked an eyebrow before he turned around to fix Corey with a stern gaze that had the teenager fidgeting in her spot, her expression quickly going from confident to sheepish in seconds.

"I believe that you have some serious explaining to do young lady," he stated seriously before he glanced over at the Doctor. "First of all, who is your friend? And second, just who or what the hell was that thing that we threw outside?"

Corey stared up at her uncle in stunned disbelief for a moment, a pained expression quickly flickering across her face before she averted her gaze, directing her attention to the floor. The Doctor looked over at the girl, who was staring at the toes of her shoes like they were the most fascinating things in the world, before he noticed Tessa start to open her mouth. He quickly placed a hand on the older girl's shoulder to catch her attention before he shook his head, indicating that she needed to let Corey say what had taken place.

The girl in question remained silent for several long moments before she drew in a shaky breath.

"Well," she finally began in a small voice, "that thing that you just threw outside was what _used_ to be Trey."

James made a small noise in the back of his throat as he looked at his niece questioningly, and she gave a barely noticeable shrug of her shoulders in response.

"How?"

"I don't know. All I know is that he…" Corey trailed off and swallowed nervously before she picked up her line of thought again. "He's wearing Trey's skin."

Her uncle looked incredibly disturbed by that statement, and the rest of her family appeared to share his sentiments. Corey was about to elaborate further when a voice that she was quickly becoming familiar with spoke up from behind them.

"Well, it's not just the skin that he's wearing," the Doctor piped up, and then grinned cheerily at the five people in the room as they all turned around to stare at him. "That little 'suit' contains a thin layer of the original person's muscles, as well as all of the body hair and everything. Well, and they have to be soaked in a special poly-silicone solution first before they can be worn, for durability, y'see. Helps the suits heal back up if they get torn, a kind of automatic repair. Although you can't exactly wear the suits without a depression collar. Really quite a masterpiece if you think about it."

Corey blinked as she stared incredulously at the Doctor, both of her eyebrows going up into her hairline before she shook her head and sighed. She had never heard someone manage to say something that fast without passing out before.

"Do you just enjoy defying the laws of physics or something?" she finally asked dryly, ignoring the muffled sounds coming from behind her. Apparently, Tessa was doing her best not to burst out laughing.

"And why do you say that?"

"Because no one normal can possibly talk that fast without taking a breath," Corey offered sardonically as she rolled her eyes upwards. The Doctor gave her a knowing smile as he stuffed his hands deep into the pockets of his trench coat and rocked backwards slightly on his heels.

"I thought we had already established that I wasn't normal," he pointed out. Tessa unexpectedly burst out laughing as she sank down into a nearby chair and buried her head in her hands, her entire body shaking with laughter as the rest of the occupants of the room all stared at her.

"I think you broke her," Corey finally said, a slight hint of concern present in her voice as she looked at her cousin worriedly. The Doctor looked offended by her comment as he pulled what was supposed to be an innocent face.

"But I didn't do anything!" he protested, his voice changing to a slightly higher pitch at the end of the sentence, earning him an odd look from Corey. The girl cocked her head slightly to the side as she raised a disbelieving eyebrow, her expression clearly stating that she did not believe him. Just when the Doctor was about to further protest his innocence – and try to avoid a slap to the face a la Jackie Tyler – Tessa sucked in a shuddering gasp as she removed her hands from her face and looked up at the people around her, her face spitting into a wide grin at the sight of the Doctor standing in front of her.

"Corey, he's a nine hundred and something year old alien that travels through time in a Police Box," she chuckled as she gave her cousin a teasing smirk. "Somehow, I get the feeling that normal flew out the window a long time ago with him."

The younger girl frowned slightly before she gave a sigh and shrugged her shoulders as she pulled a face, silently admitting that Tessa did indeed have a point. Both girls ignored the slightly flabbergasted look that their elder family members were giving them before Tessa cracked a grin.

"This is so weird… our history professor is an _alien_. Does that mean our math teacher's a werewolf?" she giggled, and Corey just shrugged in response, ignoring the indignant gaping sound that the Doctor made at the comment.

"Nah, I think vampire's more likely," she stated blandly, although the corner of her mouth twitched upwards slightly. "I mean, have you seen how he swoops down on people?"

Tessa snickered softly before she gave Corey a mock serious look. "Somehow I don't think Liz is ever going to let us live this one down."

"Nope, not a chance," was the flat response as the younger girl walked over to the sofa located in the living room and flopped down onto the soft surface with a long sigh of relief. "Okay, I'm gonna crash for the next… week, I think. Wake me up when things make sense again."

All was quiet for a few moments before there was the soft sound of rubber tread hitting the wooden floor until the footsteps came to a stop somewhere near her head. Corey resisted the urge to crack open an eye to see who the person approaching her was, somehow already having an idea of who it was. That particular idea was soon verified when a long-fingered hand grasped her by the shoulder and hauled her up into a sitting position, and the girl opened her eyes with weary resignation.

"Now that's not very nice, leaving me to do all the explaining," the Doctor said with a slight whine in his voice as he gave Corey a mock hurt look. She rolled her eyes before she brought up her hand and slightly hit his shoulder, flashing the older man a teasing grin when he looked at her curiously.

"You started it," she pointed out.

"I did not. You could've run home like I told you to."

"You still started it."

The Doctor opened his mouth to protest, only to be interrupted by the sound of James clearing his throat rather loudly as he fixed the young-looking man with a steely glare before he turned his gaze onto Corey.

"Corey, who is your… friend?" he asked in a deceptively calm tone of voice. The girl question flinched slightly before she turned around and offered her uncle a sheepish grin, her expression indicating that she sincerely hoped that she would not get in trouble for whatever answer she gave. After a few seconds of awkward silence, Corey finally accepted that she could no longer delay the inevitable as she let out a put-upon sigh and her shoulders slumped.

"Uncle James, remember the substitute teacher that Tessa and I were talking about? Dr. John Smith?" she asked hesitantly, giving the older man a small smile. "Well, here he is. Actually, he's called the Doctor though, not Dr. Smith like he said he was." Corey shrugged at the incredulous look that she received before she turned around and indicated in the direction of her aunt and uncle, offering the lanky man a somewhat teasing grin at the baffled expression on his face. "Doctor, allow me to introduce my aunt and uncle; James and Andrea Matthews. Uncle James was my dad's older brother."

"So I guessed," the Doctor replied offhandedly as he locked gazes with the ex-hockey player, who was giving the Time Lord a very evil look indeed. "You both have the same kind of nose."

"Alright, introductions are over. Let's get on with life," Braden said as he abruptly interrupted the stare-off between his dad and the 'weirdo alien dude', as he had privately dubbed the Doctor. Both men favored him with a flat stare for the remark, and Braden wisely decided that it might just be a better idea for him to remain quiet.

Silence fell over the room as the two men stared at each other for several long moments, neither one of them so much as twitching. Corey and Tessa exchanged confused looks at James's reaction; normally, he was pretty easy-going about most things. However, a homicidal reptilian alien from another dimension hardly qualified as anything even remotely close to 'normal'. Finally, James was the one to look away as he glanced over at Corey, who sat up just a little bit straighter in her spot on the couch.

"Corey, I want you to go to your room,' he finally said, and the girl immediately shot to her feet with an indignant yelp.

"But-!" she began, only to be immediately cut off by a single word.

"Now."

Corey wilted visibly at her uncle's tone, and she nodded glumly in response before she headed over towards the stairway that led up to the second floor – and consequently, the bedroom that she shared with Tessa. She was right at the foot of the staircase when she turned around and gave the Doctor a bright grin, her grey eyes shining with a somewhat mischievous light.

"Hey Doctor?" she began hesitantly, looking the Time Lord right in the eyes. "Thanks."

And with that statement, she vanished up the stairs. Tessa waited for a few seconds before she got up and followed after her, softly whispering to her father as she passed by to 'be nice', before she too was gone. Once the Doctor was reasonably sure that the two girls were gone, he returned his attention to the remaining part of the Matthews family and gave them all a cheery smile.

"All right then," he declared as he clapped his hands together and a somewhat maniac light entered his eyes, "who wants to go first?"

* * *

Oh boy, Trey got his scaly ass kicked, and the Doctor gets to face down the evil Glare 'o Doom from Corey's uncle. Fun times.

My thanks to everyone who reviewed, and all of you who at least bothered to read the story and/or favorited it.

**Reviews:**

RandomCheeses: Yes, that is indeed a very good sign. Good news, I got the first two seasons of the new Doctor Who series on DVD (Barnes and Noble, I now owe you a life-debt), through some very creative uses of gift cards from multiple family members. (I'm well known in my family for being a major book-lover.) I just finished the 5th episode of the second season, and I must say that Mr. Tennant is even more hysterical than I originally thought. ("Blood control! I haven't seen blood control in _years_!")

CountryGrl: Thank you so very much. Hey, do I do a bit better on this chapter with the lingo and everything? The thing with Corey is that I want her to be just an ordinary kid. Honestly, the worst thing that ever happened to her was losing her parents and brother, and that has affected her, but she's also tried to move on a bit. She's not one to mope around and be all 'Oh, woe is me'. She's more than happy to leave that to the sissy girly-girls in her classes, you know, the ones who are all at college just to 'find a man'. And I'm really glad that you like the Quisforth. Creating them was one of the hardest things that I've had to do, because there was no way that I could use a pre-existing creature for the plotline that I had in mind.

Lost child of Gallifrey: So you like Doctor Who and Supernatural? Cool beans. Glad to know that I'm not the only one.

The Penguin Ate My Homework: Wow, nice name. And I'm glad that you're enjoying the story so far. I really do try my best to make things seem realistic in my work. Reading about OOCness, and Mary-Sues just isn't all that fun.

Gahoole15: I sure hope so. An out of character Doctor would be a VERY bad thing. And I'm glad that you enjoyed my little attention-grabbing technique. I call it the 'Suspense-no-Jutsu'! (Is promptly pelted with various household items by various individuals – namely Corey, Jack Harkness, and the Doctor – for the bad _Naruto_ reference)


	4. Chapter 4: Break Away

_You're falling asleep  
I can feel you dreaming  
Are you thinking of me  
Are you feeling the love?  
I'm caught in between  
The way it is, how it could be  
I'll never believe  
You wanted me to go_- **Future In the End** by Evans Blue

So sleep love  
Just dream love  
And don't let it go  
Just promise you won't  
And I'll be home

I believe I'm falling apart again  
Can't believe it's all my fault, and when  
I fall; then you follow me in  
I can see the future in the end  
Can't believe it's finally come to this  
I fall and you follow me in

* * *

"Everybody seeks happiness! Not _me_, though! That's the difference between me and the rest of the world. Happiness isn't good enough for me! I demand euphoria!" – Calvin, _Calvin and Hobbes_

**Chapter Four:**

**Break Away**

"Well this bites monkey balls."

Tessa favored Corey with an exasperated look as she watched the younger girl kick off her shoes before she set about removing her damaged jacket and flannel shirt and tossing them up onto her bed. She'd try to fix them later, once she no longer felt like she was about to pass out from exhaustion – both mental and physical. Both the jacket and the flannel shirt had belonged to her dad when he had been about her age, and she really didn't want to lose them.

"Dad's just trying to keep you safe," she began patiently, although the younger girl could easily detect the hint of disappointment in her voice. Corey gave Tessa a disbelieving look as she went over to the dresser in her corner of the room and pulled open the middle drawer before she started to rummage around inside. After a few moments, she let out a soft sound of satisfaction as she pulled out a black, green, white, and maroon long-sleeved hockey jersey before she promptly jerked it on over her head. Tessa rolled her eyes when she caught sight of the coyote emblem proudly emblazoned on the front of the jersey and sat down at the desk the two girls shared.

"Well, according to the Doctor, as long as I'm here, nothing's safe anymore," was Corey's somewhat muffled response before she finally pulled her head through the neck hole of the shirt, her long hair now sticking out slightly due to static. "Apparently I really pissed off someone I shouldn't have."

Tessa cocked an eyebrow as she gave her cousin an inquiring glance. "And this is different from what you normally do, how?"

Corey froze as she stared at Tessa with wide eyes before she let out a soft sigh and went over to where her laptop was currently resting on the desk. Wordlessly, she removed the device from the desk and slid it up onto her bed on the top bunk, quickly tossing up her headphones shortly after that. As Tessa watched intently, the younger girl scrambled up the wooden ladder connecting the top bunk with the floor and situated herself on her bed before she powered up her laptop. Once everything was up and running, Corey started up iTunes and put her newest song on a one-track loop.

The beginning chords to _Three Days Grace_'s newest song, **Break**, started up, but they were quickly cut off by Corey plugging in her headphones. Tessa arched an eyebrow as she watched Corey move one of her pillows so that it was between her back and the wall before she leaned up against the support and started to do something on the laptop, which was now resting on her crossed legs.

"That bad, huh?" she asked softly. Corey ignored her as she started to mouth the song lyrics, the music coming from the headphones hooked around her ears blocking out all other noises.

Tessa sighed before she pulled out a book from the library that she had been reading and flipped it open to the page that she had last left off on as she sat down on her bed. Somehow, she had a feeling that it was going to be a long night.

* * *

Meanwhile, downstairs, a conversation was taking place that would defy the very laws of reality were anyone not involved in the incident to overhear it.

"Look you, I don't care if you're a doctor, a lawyer, or a damned cop. I want you out of my house, and take your troubles with you," James growled as he got right up in the Doctor's face, although the Time Lord did not even blink at the other man's threat. Instead, he merely stood there, with his hands stuffed nonchalantly in his pockets, before he took a step closer to the former hockey player.

"Do you honestly believe that this will all just go away?" he asked as he stared intently at James. "That if you just send me away, all will be well in your normal little world? I hate to break it to you, Jamie-boy, but when your niece looked into the stars, they looked right back at her." The Doctor's tone became more passionate as he paced back and forth in front of the man, his brown eyes practically boring right into James's own gray-blue ones as he spoke. "No matter what you do, no matter how hard you try to protect her, that Quisforth will always come looking for Corey, will do his best to hurt her. And he knows just how to do that now. Because he knows her type."

Silence filled the room as James and Braden stared intently at the lanky man, their expressions grim, while Andrea looked nervously between the three men. Finally, Braden was the one to voice the question that everyone else was thinking.

"And just what is Corey's type?" he asked quietly, even though deep down inside, he already knew the answer. He had spent too many nights sitting up with a shaking, sobbing girl curled into a tiny ball at his side, her hands tightly fisted into his sleep shirt as she begged and pleaded for her parents to stay, for her brother to stay, to not leave her behind, all while trapped inside the throes of a nightmare. And he had been there that day, the first day after Corey had started taking judo, when she had softly made a promise that he knew she would rather die than break.

"_Never again. Not if I can help it. Never again." The words were eerie, sounding so old, so passionate, and yet they tumbled from the mouth of a thirteen-year-old girl as she stood in front a large photograph placed on a bookshelf. Her eyes looked so lost as she gazed longingly at the frozen image before her before she gently reached up and brushed her fingers across the glass covering the image. Braden shuddered slightly as he watched the faint exchange from around the corner of the doorway to the kitchen. _

_This wasn't the first time that he had found Corey looking at the last picture that had been taken of her family when she should have been sleeping, and he knew that it wouldn't be the last. He waited until the girl made her way over to the couch and curled up under one of the blankets, quickly drifting off into a dreamless sleep due to exhaustion, before he made his way out of the kitchen. Easily scooping the smaller girl up into his arms, he carried her up the stairs and deposited her in the bed next to his sister's, gently pulling the covers up over her sleeping form as he tucked her in just as he had so many times before._

"She's got a hero complex, thinks that she has to save the world, and doesn't care what happens to her in the process," the Doctor stated succinctly, his tone weary as he glanced briefly over in the direction of the stairs before he returned his attention to James. "I've seen it before. She'll never just sit back and let you protect her. She'll stand up and fight, lash out at whatever's threatening what's precious to her. And if you don't let her do that, then she'll leave. All just to keep you lot safe."

Surprisingly, it was Andrea who spoke up this time. "And how can you say that when you don't even know Corey? She's just a little girl! You have no idea what she's been through, what she's had to deal with in her life! And then you just come waltzing right on in, telling us what to do to keep her safe! Tell me, have you even raised a child before, Doctor?" The dark-haired woman took a step forward and glared at him, her eyes narrowed dangerously. "Do you know what it's like to try and keep them fed and clothed, to tell them stories before bed, to watch them grow up and know that you can't protect them from everything that's out there? Corey may only be my niece, but you'll find that she is very much a part of this family, and I care for her just as much as my own daughter! So don't you **dare** come here and tell us what to do!!"

"I didn't mean it like that!" the lanky man protested indignantly as he looked at Andrea askance, a disbelieving frown on his face. "And for your information, I was a father, once. Not that that's any of your business. Humans! Always seeing something besides the point."

"You're changing the subject," James pointed out tersely as he took a step forward and crossed his arms over his chest. The Doctor looked over at him and cocked his head slightly to the side before he frowned intently.

"No I'm not, you are," he stated before he turned around and started to pace back and forth, frowning slightly. "And you, why do you say that Corey is only a child? She's old enough to make her own decisions, isn't she?"

"She's only seventeen!" Andrea protested as she glared at the Doctor.

"Why does that matter so much to you?" the Doctor asked quietly, and yet when he spoke it was in a way that made everyone in the room listen to him. "She fought against six Quisforth today –of her own free will, might I add – because she knew that they wouldn't leave her alone once they knew that she had seen them for what they really were."

"And that is exactly why she's still a child," James stated darkly as he glowered at the Doctor, his expression thunderous. "Corey is barely seventeen years old, and she's already in college. She tries to do things that adults should be taking care of, and she doesn't understand the consequences of what may happen to her as a result." The taller man straightened up and leveled an absolutely frigid look at the Time Lord, his blue eyes narrowed almost into slits. "And you, as her teacher, should have done whatever you could to keep her out of this."

"Oh, you're about twenty-four hours too late for that, Jaime-boy," the Doctor remarked flippantly as he stuffed his hands into his pockets and rocked back slightly on his heels. "She stumbled upon one of the Quisforth that I was trying to speak to on accident last night. Bolted right out of the room like a scared rabbit as soon as she had the chance."

Braden winced slightly as his dad turned a very interesting shade of puce at the remark, and the offhanded tone that it had been delivered in. Things were about to get nasty, especially since one of the easiest ways to get his father to lose his temper was to show an apparent disregard for someone's safety.

"Why you…" James growled as he glared venomously at the Doctor, who continued to speak as though he hadn't heard the other man

"Your niece is a fantastic young woman, and I can honestly say that I'm happy to know her," he said as he leaned forward slightly and scratched Dirk's ears as the large dog leaned up against his leg, the very picture of nonchalance. "However, if she stays here she'll be in grave danger. Somehow I don't think that you pictured her ending up on the news as a recipient of a very violent murder."

There was an almost audible snap as the last shreds of James's limited patience finally shattered, and his hand snapped forward to grab the Doctor by the front of his jacket.

"How dare you!" he snarled as he dragged the other man close to his face. "I am talking to you!"

"And **I'm** not **listening**!!" the Doctor snapped back as he returned the glare with interest, the dark expression in his eyes making the former hockey player let go almost as though he had been burned as he hastily took a step back. "Now you, Mr. Matthews, are staring into a deep, dark pit of trouble if you do not let me help!"

Braden looked in between the two men, and then glanced over at his mother, who was watching the proceedings with an increasingly irritated look, and let out a weary sigh. Unlike his dad, he already knew that there was no way to make this whole fiasco just go away. He remembered all too well the words that Trey had hissed into his ear to describe just what he would do to Corey, how he would break her spirit, make her cry out in anguish for him to stop, right before she begged him to take her own life just to make the pain stop.

And all of that would only be after he slaughtered all of the people that she cared for.

"I can't believe that I'm even thinking about this. This is insane," Braden muttered under his breath before he shook his head and looked over at the Doctor. "You say that you want to help. How would you do that?"

The Doctor arched an eyebrow as he looked over at the twenty-year old speculatively before he gave the young man a wide grin as he straightened up. "Finally! Someone who asks the right questions!"

Braden just nodded as he reached up and raked his hand over his short brown hair, ignoring the shocked looks that he was receiving from both of his parents.

"You know, if I hadn't seen those things for myself, and run from them, I would have thought that you were crazy," he began hesitantly. "I mean, giant lizard things that eat people? Aliens from outer space? Seriously, how do you even begin to wrap your mind around this kind of stuff? It's… it's insane, but you're the one who knows that you're dealing with right? So, please, just please tell me what's going to happen."

The Doctor stared at Braden intently for several long moments before he gave a soft sigh, muttering something under his breath that sounded like 'humans', before he directed his attention over at James and Andrea.

"Well, at least you have more sense than those two," he pointed out, looking like he wanted to roll his eyes before he glanced over in James's direction. "Now will you lot actually listen to me this time?"

Andrea opened her mouth to protest, only to be cut off as James gently placed a hand on her shoulder and gave her a weary look. Apparently, he had calmed down enough to realize that losing his temper wasn't going to get him anywhere. The Doctor glanced over at the two adults cautiously, and once he was satisfied that they weren't going to interrupt, he pulled out his sonic screwdriver from the depths of his coat pocket and started to fiddle around with it as he spoke.

"Quisforth are a very vengeful race," he began offhandedly, his tone somewhat distracted as he continued to fiddle about with his screwdriver. "Their survival on an alien planet depends on them being able to mesh in with the inhabitants, so if someone finds out what they are, even on accident, they'll stop at nothing to make sure that particular individual… disappears. However, Corey's involvement in this is far different than what usually occurs, because she actually _fought back_." The Doctor's expression turned grim as he looked up at the three people in front of him and frowned. "This Quisforth doesn't like that, at all. And, it didn't help her situation when she decided to accompany me to the science lab to help destroy the nest that was downstairs."

"There was a nest?" Braden asked incredulously as he gaped at the Doctor. "As in these things were _breeding_, and laying eggs?" There was a long stretch of heavy silence as everyone looked over at the Time Lord before Braden voiced what everyone else was thinking. "Please tell me that you killed them."

This time, the Doctor did roll his eyes as he let out a low huff of irritation and gave the younger man an insulted look. "What is it with humans and always killing things? Why is that always the first option?"

"But you just said that you destroyed the nest. And you're human too!" Braden retorted as he crossed his arms over his chest, his expression one of absolute belligerence as he stood stubbornly in front of the older man. The Doctor let out a long sigh as he looked upwards, his face a mask of resignation.

"No, I'm not," he said wearily as he ran a hand over his messy hair, sending some of the brown strands standing up on end. "I'm a Time Lord. There's a difference."

Braden visibly deflated at this bit of information as he looked at the Doctor apprehensively.

"But you look-" he began hesitantly, only to be quickly cut off by the other man.

"Appearances can be deceiving," the Doctor interjected as he looked at Braden, a brown eyebrow cocked almost all the way to his hairline. "Do you have any idea how _common_ the humanoid stature is outside of this little ball of dirt? There are hundreds, no, _thousands_ of species all throughout the universe that share the same basic bipedal form that you humans have. Some of them look just like you, only with a few differences. I'm one of those species." A thoughtful frown crossed his face as he apparently thought about something before he shook his head in an apparent dismissal of the thought and rubbed the back of his head somewhat agitatedly. "Now, will you please let me get to the point?"

The words had barely fallen from his lips when a voice rang out from the staircase, causing him to jerk slightly in surprise.

"When you leave, are you taking Corey with you?"

Everyone turned around to see Tessa standing at the foot of the stairs, her expression one of weary acceptance as she stared right at the Doctor. The Time Lord's only response was to gape at Tessa like she had asked him if he could drag the moon down to Earth, or she had sprouted another head. When no one said anything – except for the somewhat indignant wordless sputtering coming from Andrea – she pushed herself away from the banister and strode over to the Doctor.

"Well, are you?" she asked seriously as she crossed her arms over her chest, cocking an eyebrow upwards.

The Doctor seemed to recover from the unexpected question as he shifted in his spot, brown eyes focused on Tessa as he looked at her curiously.

"And what makes you ask that?"

Tessa rolled her eyes upwards before she favored the older man with a look that plainly told him that she was not nearly as stupid as he thought she was.

"I think that you know very well why I asked that," she retorted dryly. "I may be a 'stupid ape', as you once so eloquently put it, but I do know enough about what's going on to realize that there is no way that this is just going to go away." Tessa ignored the absolutely flabbergasted expression on the Doctor's face as she continued, her face set in a neutral mask. "People who get too close to you… they burn. Even if they never see you again, weird things keep happening to them, they encounter things that are not of this earth, even if only by accident, and sooner or later their luck runs out."

"How do you know that?" the Doctor whispered, a small bit of steel slipping into his voice as he stared at Tessa, his entire body stiff. She didn't look at him as she leaned up against the wall and looked out the living room window, a distant look in her eyes as she regarded the fat raindrops that were starting to fall down outside.

"I know that there's a big difference between reality and what's on TV," she finally said softly. "But here's the thing; we can't deal with whatever you followed here. I don't think that there's anyone here asides from the crazies who claim that they've been abducted who would even know where to begin, and even then they're pretty questionable."

Braden let out a short, harsh laugh as he looked over at his sister, who merely shrugged in response. The Doctor let out a soft, annoyed sigh as he observed the two siblings closely before he arched an eyebrow questioningly.

"So, you watch that show on the telly," he stated flatly, a faint hint of irritation in his voice before it dropped down to an indignant mutter. "I travel through the whole of time and space, the last of the Time Lords, and as soon as I go to another reality, I end up as a television show."

Tessa actually giggled at the man's remark before she gave the Doctor a teasing smile. "At least this isn't the world where everything tastes like shrimp."

The only response she received to that particular comment was a raised eyebrow from the Doctor as he stared at her in faint disbelief, and an exasperated groan from Braden. Her brother's frustration was further punctuated by him muttering a few choice phrases under his breath, both of which she was able to discern as 'I can't believe you just quoted that dumb show', and 'Just get on with it, will you?', as well as a few generic insults usually exchanged between siblings. Smiling enigmatically, Tessa not-so-subtly stepped on Braden's toes, eliciting a series of hissed curses as he quickly moved away from her.

Before their actions could escalate further, the Doctor got their attention by clearing his throat loudly, earning sheepish grins from both Tessa and Braden as they stopped their 'argument'.

"If you don't mind," he said pointedly. "Now, why is it that you want me to take Corey with me when I leave?"

"Because she'll be safer running around with you than she will be if she stays here," Tessa stated flatly as she let out a heavy sigh, pointedly ignoring the small noise of protest that her mother made before James cut her off with a look. "You're only one man. You can't come rushing in to save the day every time whenever something goes bad, no matter how good you are. And if Corey really did piss off this thing as badly as you say she did, well… somehow, I don't really see the fact that we're in another universe stopping this guy if he can rip through reality."

The Doctor stood there for several long moments, an indescribable expression on his face as he stared intently at Tessa. Slowly, he shifted his gaze to Braden, and then James, who seemed to have come to a decision of his own before he nodded silently in agreement. However, if the pained look on his face was anything to go by, it was definitely not an easy decision for him to make.

Finally, the Doctor spoke, his words lingering heavily in the still air as he shifted uneasily in his spot. This was definitely a new experience for him; he had never actually had someone's _family_ ask him to take someone along with him on his travels. Usually they were the ones kicking up a fuss because he had dragged them along on one of his escapades.

"I got here on accident, through a crack in time, a hole in the universe," he said seriously. "Once I go back through, I can never come back."

Surprisingly, Tessa uttered two words that made him gape at her like she had lost her mind. "I know."

"Then you know that if she comes with me, then she can never come back, ever," the Doctor said seriously, his expression grim as he stared intently at Tessa, who looked slightly shocked at his words. "Already, this world is in very real danger from the Quisforth's actions. They punched a hole in the very fabric of reality to get here, not caring a bit about the consequences. As a result, the barriers between this reality and mine are starting to crumble; things are starting to slip through. I have to leave, and soon, otherwise everything will just mesh together and pow!" Everyone jumped as the Doctor loudly smacked his closed fist into his left hand. "Two universes will collapse, and massive chaos will ensue. Lots of people will probably die, and the earth as you know it will change dramatically. But, if I leave without finding the Quisforth and cutting off his method of entering this world, then the hole in reality will just keep getting bigger and bigger every time that he comes back through, even if I seal it up behind me."

"But, if you close the rift behind you, shouldn't it stay that way?" Braden pointed out curiously. The insulting look that he received from the Doctor indicated to the serious error in his manner of deduction.

"It's like stitching up a wound," the Time Lord told him with an exasperated sigh. "If you probe at it too soon before its healed up all the way, it will open back up and keep getting bigger and bigger every time that it's poked at."

Braden looked startled by this bit of information, while Tessa just nodded in agreement. James gave his daughter an odd look before he took a step forward and fixed the Doctor with a stern gaze.

"If you leave and the rift closes back up after you've gone, then why would you need to bring Corey along with you?" he asked softly, one of his eyebrows cocking upwards slightly in question as he crossed his heavily muscled arms over his chest. The Doctor favored the man with a weary look, one that plainly said 'do I have to spell it out for you?', before he let out a long sigh and ran a hand over his messy hair.

"Because if I leave, and the Quisforth comes back without me knowing, then he'll rip his way back into this reality. And as it is, the barriers around this world are already dangerously weak. One more good crack at it and it will probably shatter. And trust me, you don't want that."

There was dead silence in the room as everyone stared at him, and the Doctor allowed Dirk to lean back up against his leg before he started scratching behind the massive dog's ears again. Tessa was the first one to notice that her mother was visibly shaking, and for one moment she thought that it was from fear before she saw the furious gleam in the older woman's eyes. She opened her mouth to say something just as Andrea stalked across the gap that separated her from the Doctor and swung. Her open palm collided with his cheek with a resounding smack that made everyone else in the room flinch, and sent the Time Lord reeling backwards as he stared incredulously at the dark-haired woman.

"How _dare_ you!" she snarled. "How dare you just go and tell us that if you don't take-"

"Mom!" Tessa yelped as she tried to go and restrain the irate woman, or at least keep her from slapping the Doctor again. "He's just trying to help."

The Doctor managed to sputter something in protest, his expression disbelieving, before he let out a weary sigh and shook his head, mentally coming to the decision that he probably didn't want to know. This was one of those situations where the less he knew, the happier he would be. Although, to be completely honest, he had never expected to emerge into a reality where his entire life happened to be a television show. It was rather disconcerting to know that a decent portion of the planet's population knew of him and his exploits, even if it was only as a work of fiction. He had watched a few of the episodes out of idle curiosity when he had first arrived, but quickly came to the conclusion that he didn't need to see someone do a replay of the majority of his life.

That didn't make it any less unnerving to know that this girl knew enough about him to make a judgment of his character though.

"Don't you dare defend him Tessa!" Andrea growled as she gave the Doctor a venomous glare, both of her delicate hands clenched tightly into fists. "If it hadn't been for this… this… pompous, overstuffed pinhead, we wouldn't even be having this discussion!"

The Doctor gave the woman a weary look before he let out a sigh, silently wondering why he allowed himself to get into these situations. For some strange reason, he always seemed to encounter the parents that would do anything to defend their children – biological and adopted – and these same parents always seemed to want to cause him physical harm. He was just glad that James hadn't decided to step into the fray yet. There was little doubt in his mind that the man could and would cause him some serious injury if he saw the need to do so.

When Andrea stepped forward to try and slap him again though, he decided that he'd had enough. The Doctor easily dodged her wild swing, and he promptly pinned her down with a fierce stare that made the woman falter, an uncertain expression crossing her face.

"So tell me, if you care about your niece as much as you say you do, then what's your plan?" he asked softly, the serious tone of his voice making Andrea hesitate as she looked at him warily. "Are you just going to hide her away from the world and hope that it keeps her safe? Just let her go on back to her old life of school and home, thinking that nothing's wrong? Because if you do that, she'll either end up dead, or worse than dead. Someday, something just may walk on through that door wearing the face of someone you love or trust and rip your entire family apart, all just for that one girl, all because she refused to just cower in fear like the rest of the world."

That seemed to finally get her attention, and the woman paled dramatically at his statement as she stared at him in incredulous horror. It looked like he was finally beginning to impress upon them the absolute severity of the situation.

* * *

Corey frowned slightly as she stared aimlessly at the glowing screen of her laptop, her mind wandering off into parts unknown. Tessa had disappeared downstairs a while ago, presumably to make sure that her mother didn't do something that she would regret, leaving Corey behind to entertain herself as she tried not to wonder if the Doctor would just leave once he was finished being grilled by her aunt and uncle.

The girl let out a long sigh as she powered down her computer and gently closed it, tucking the laptop under her arm before she descended from her bunk so she could plug the computer back in to the power cord still resting innocently on the desk next to Tessa's own laptop. She knew that if she kept thinking about what was going on, it would drive her absolutely nuts. From what Liz had said during one of her many frequent babbling fests over _Doctor Who_, the Doctor tended to just swoop in, save the day, and then disappear again. So given her luck, she'd probably never see the man again.

For some reason, that disappointed her a little bit. Sure, the Doctor was a little out there, but he was kind of funny – at least when they weren't running for their lives – and he had been a pretty good teacher. It was just a little disappointing that he would most likely just leave without saying goodbye once he was finished talking with her uncle.

"Okay, I'm sulking. I need to stop, now," Corey grumbled irritably under her breath as she shook her head, grabbing her MP3 player from its designated pocket in her backpack and plugging her headphones in before she turned it on. Sticking the device into the pocket of her jeans, she slipped the headphones back over her ears and waited for the music to start. Almost immediately, the opening chords to a song by Evans Blue started up, and she let out a weary sigh as she wandered over to the large bookcase that she shared with Tessa and pulled out the first novel of _The Dresden Files_ before she clambered back up onto her bed. Flopping down on the thick navy comforter that covered her bed sheets, Corey flipped open her book and immersed herself within the story of Chicago's only wizard listed in the phone book.

She had been reading for a while when someone suddenly rapped on the closed bedroom door loudly, causing her to jump as she wrenched her headphones off and allowed them to hang around her neck.

"Permission to enter?" an annoyingly cheerful voice that she was quickly becoming familiar with asked, and Corey froze for a second in shock before her face split into a wide grin as she gave a short laugh. Apparently she had been wrong.

"Only if you don't fear death," she drawled sarcastically as she set her book down on her pillow and sat up from the somewhat awkward position she had been lying in. There was a snicker from the other side of the door, accompanied by a bewildered-sounding and slightly muffled "What?".

"That's our little code word," Tessa explained, the amusement in her voice obvious. "It's a joke."

"Oh."

And with that comment, the door opened and the Doctor stepped into the room, grinning widely at Corey. Tessa followed him in, and flashed her cousin a small smile as the younger girl gave her a curious look.

"No, Dad didn't take his head off too much," she said with a roll of her eyes. The Doctor cocked an eyebrow questioningly at her, and then frowned when he caught sight of the impish glint in the brunette's eyes.

"Not a word," he warned before he turned around to face Corey, who was currently giving him a flat look. "And how are you feeling?"

"Fine. What are you doing here?"

The Doctor grinned widely at her as he stuffed his hands into the pocket of his brown trench coat and slowly paced in front of the bookcase, where he started to study the covers of the various novels lining the shelves as he spoke.

"Oh, can't I just come up and check on you, make sure you're alright?" he asked innocently as he reached out and plucked out a book on Irish mythology, looking at the back cover intently. Corey arched an eyebrow as she crossed her arms over her chest and gave the older man a skeptical look.

"Last time you 'just checked on me', I ended up running for my life," she told him flatly, although there was a faint hint of a smile twitching about her lips as she did so. The Doctor seemed to catch that as he replaced the book back in its spot and smiled at her. Corey rolled her eyes in response as she clambered down the ladder and placed her feet down on the wooden floor, reaching up to brush some of her hair out of her eyes as she looked up at the older man.

"Was that a smile?" the Doctor asked suddenly, and Corey gave him an odd look as she tried to keep any traces of amusement off of her face.

"No," she said almost automatically, and then realized that she had just made a big mistake as the Doctor gave her one of his maniac grins, which he seemed to be doing all too often lately.

"That was smile."

"No it wasn't."

"You smiled," he told her smugly, and Corey had to fight back the urge to let out a loud groan of aggravation as she bit down on her lower lip, the corners of her mouth tugging upwards as she gave the Time Lord a mock exasperated look.

"No I didn't," she insisted, although it didn't do her much good when the Doctor pointed at her and smiled triumphantly.

"Well you are now," he pointed out, and this time Corey did let out a groan as she covered her face with her hand, a small chuckle escaping from her mouth as she did so.

"You are such a dork," she muttered under her breath as she gave the older man an exasperated look, although she delivered the statement with a smile. The Doctor made an indignant noise in response while Tessa just chuckled, grinning widely at the scene playing out before her as she leaned up against the wall and watched in obvious interest. Once the Doctor had finished sputtering his many protests at her comment, he straightened up and gave Corey a friendly grin.

"All seriousness aside, I actually did want to talk to you," he told her before he frowned slightly. "Well, actually I wanted to ask you something."

Surprisingly, Tessa chose that moment to turn around and walk out into the hallway, leaving Corey and the Doctor standing in the room alone. The younger girl shot her cousin a confused look, her lips twisting into a slight frown, before she returned her attention to the Doctor. He glanced over at her, apparently looking for something, before he opened his mouth and spoke.

"Do you wanna come with me?" he asked suddenly, and Corey swore that the very world came to a stop as she gaped at the older man, her expression incredulous.

"What?" she asked softly, suddenly feeling lightheaded as she slowly sat down at the foot of Tessa's bed. She wasn't sure that her legs would support her as she gazed up at the Doctor in stunned disbelief. "Why?"

He gave her another one of those maniac grins that she was quickly becoming familiar with and stuffed his hands back into the pockets of his coat.

"Oh, I don't know," he drawled, but there was a slightly mischievous tone in his voice that made Corey give him an odd look. "You just seem like someone who wants to see more of the world than just where you're at. And the TARDIS is more than just a spaceship; it's a time machine too. I can show you all sorts of things. Ghosts from the past. Aliens from the future. The day the Earth died in a ball of flame. It won't be quiet, it won't be safe, and it won't be calm." The Doctor was practically vibrating with energy by this point as his grin stretched from ear to ear, his entire manner similar to that of an excited child. "But I'll tell you what it will be: the trip of a lifetime!"

Corey blinked, not trusting her voice to work as she stared at the Doctor, before she let out a long sigh and ran a hand through her hair nervously. On one hand, it was practically everything that she had ever asked for since her family had died; action, adventure, encounters with things that people didn't think existed. But, the flip side of the equation was that she would have to leave her aunt and uncle behind. She'd have to abandon Braden and Tessa. She'd have to leave behind the people that she cared about.

"You should go."

Corey jumped slightly as she looked over at the door where Tessa was standing, a small smile on her face as she held one of Braden's khaki green military surplus duffle bags in her hands.

"Seriously, it's like he said," she told the younger girl as she tossed the sturdy canvas bag at her, smirking as Corey half-stood up and fumbled clumsily to catch it. "It'll be the trip of a lifetime. You'll get to see things that people on this planet have only _dreamed_ of seeing. And I already went and got permission for you from the parental units. Mom and Dad said that it was okay for you to go."

"What?" she whispered incredulously, gray eyes wide as she gaped at Tessa before she returned her attention to the Doctor. "Are you serious?"

"Would I ask if I wasn't?"

Corey paused for a second as she fidgeted slightly in her seat, her thoughts racing along at what seemed like a million miles an hour. There were two sides to the equation. If she said no, she would never have a chance like this again, and she would probably regret it later on. But if she said yes…

The seventeen-year old stood up to her full height, gave the Doctor a brilliant, cocky smirk, and stuffed her hands deep into the pockets of her jeans.

"Just let me get packed."

The Doctor grinned enthusiastically as he reached over and ruffled her hair, and Corey stepped away before she immediately reached up and flattened the now-static strands, giving the older man a mock scowl as she raked her fingers through her hair.

"Sheesh, what is it with you and doing that?" she asked before she flapped her hands at him. "Now shoo. I need to get packed real quick, and then I'll be ready to go."

"And how quick is 'real quick'?" the Doctor queried as he arched an eyebrow. Corey gave him a flat look before she rolled her eyes upwards.

"Ten minutes tops," she finally said, and smirked at the shocked look that flickered across the Doctor's face at her words. Tessa just let out a soft sigh and shook her head before she glanced over at the Doctor, although it was apparent that she found her cousin's comment amusing as well. Corey was well-known for being able to be packed and ready to go somewhere in far less time than it took most people to get ready.

After a few moments of shuffling around nervously and giving Corey a thoughtful look, the Doctor finally exited the room, leaving Tessa behind to help pack. The two girls glanced over at each other, with Corey cocking a questioning eyebrow as she grabbed her backpack up off the floor and walked over to the dresser. Tessa didn't do anything for a moment before she realized that her cousin was only packing one change of clothes in the canvas bag – pretty much the equivalent of an overnight bag.

"Corey, you're going to be traveling all throughout time and space," she offered with a slight grin. The younger girl gave her a somewhat confused look and shrugged nonchalantly.

"So?"

"What may only be a day or two for us may be weeks for you," Tessa told her seriously. "Do you _really_ want to wear the same clothes for that long? I brought out one of Braden's duffle bags for a reason."

Corey grimaced at the idea, and gave a slightly sheepish chuckle as she accepted the bag from Tessa, turning the large canvas duffle bag over in her hands thoughtfully for a few moments before she looked up at her cousin.

"Um, sorry?" she offered with a slight shrug and a wry grin. "So, how much should I pack?"

Tessa looked at her flatly for a few moments before she started to bustle around the room, pulling open drawers and removing various articles of clothing before setting them on her bed. Corey just stood there with a somewhat bewildered expression on her face as she watched her cousin move around in a determined manner, before she finally snapped out of her stunned daze and started to pack up the clothing that the older girl had picked out. All of her flannel shirts were pulled out, as well as her favorite t-shirts and non-holey jeans. Tessa scrutinized the pile of clothing thoughtfully for a second before she added in two sweaters, Corey's battered black leather hiking boots, her leather bomber jacket, a few pairs of shorts, and the damaged jean jacket that she had been wearing earlier.

"There, you should be good now," she said proudly as she gave the decent-sized stack of clothing a satisfied look. Corey arched an eyebrow as she looked over at the amount that she was now expected to pack, and opted not to say anything. Tessa got this way sometimes when she started to do her 'mother-hen' act, and it was best to just let her get on with it.

"Anything else I need to pack, oh wise one?" she asked sarcastically as she quickly set to the task of packing the folded clothes into Braden's massive duffle bag, getting up only to retrieve certain garments from the top drawer of her dresser, as well as a decent number of socks and a few sets of pajamas. "The kitchen sink, perhaps?"

Tessa glanced over at Corey and gave her a somewhat flat look. "Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of books."

The girl immediately flinched, something about that statement sending shudders of dread down her spine. Sometimes Tessa went a little overboard on things. It was starting to look like one of those times.

By the time that everything had been packed to her cousin's very precise specifications, Corey had two bags, plus her backpack. Her school textbooks were stuffed in the duffle with her clothes, along with a decent portion of the books on her half of the bookshelf. Muttering a series of rather unflattering comments under her breath about Tessa's enthusiasm in helping her pack, Corey slowly made her way down the stairs just in time to hear an angry outburst from the direction of the living room.

"What the hell?!! How the hell can they do that?!"

Recognizing the voice as Braden's, Corey immediately hurried down the stairs and into the room just in time to see her cousin stand in front of the TV, ranting up a storm as he gestured angrily at the news report that was displaying the aftermath of the lab fire. "You could tell right away that they weren't human, just by looking at the damn things!! I mean, I was there for Christ's sake! Hell, how can some dumbass mistake the corpses for being human when they had fucking three-foot long **tails**?!"

Corey forced herself to bite down on her hand so she wouldn't burst out laughing at the sight as she gently set down her load, not wanting to just stand around and wait until she was noticed.

"Well, that's the thing about you humans," the Doctor interjected suddenly, and Corey glanced over to see him seated comfortably in the armchair next to the couch. He noticed her standing in the doorway, and flashed her a brief grin before he returned his attention to Braden's comment. "You can always see something that's invisible, but if it's staring you right in the face – nope, can't see it!"

This time, Corey did start to snicker at the remark, and the rest of her family glanced over to look at her. Her aunt looked like she was slightly less than pleased with something, but the expression disappeared quickly as she walked over and enveloped the teenager in a warm hug.

"You stay safe," she whispered quietly as she ran a delicate hand over Corey's long hair, earning a soft sigh from the girl as she flashed Andrea a reassuring grin.

"Not a problem," she told her before their attention was drawn back to Braden and the Doctor's discussion.

"Honesty, I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that this is happening right now… but why can't people just see what's right in front of them?"

There was a gap of silence in the room as the Doctor let out a long sigh, running a hand over his hair reflectively. He glanced over at Braden and gave a small smile.

"There's a scientific explanation for that: You're _thick_!" he pointed out cheerfully. Braden stared at the Time Lord curiously for a few moments, cocking an eyebrow before he started to laugh.

"Oh thanks, I feel so much better now," he chuckled dryly. "A 900-year-old alien who sounds like he's from England thinks the entire human race is a bunch of idiots. Glad to know that someone else agrees with me."

The Doctor frowned slightly at the remark before he gave the younger man one of his trademark insane grins and shrugged his shoulders in a nonchalant manner. "Well, not all of you. It's just the vast majority of your race who wouldn't know which way was up without a map."

"Are those the same idiots who navigate via Circle K?" Corey asked innocently as she came up behind Braden and leaned up against the back of the couch, smirking widely. There was an indignant noise from Braden, and her uncle almost doubled over as he tried his hardest not to burst out laughing, especially when his son gave him an accusing glare. The Doctor shot her a questioning look, and she smirked before she pointed over in Braden's direction.

"This dork got lost one time because there were no Circle K's around for him to use as landmarks. And Tessa and I were both in the car trying to give him directions at the time too, but he wouldn't listen to us. Kept insisting that he knew where we were going," she explained in what appeared to be a resigned manner, as though she was embarrassed for her cousin. If the rather interesting shade of red her cousin was turning as he gave Corey a death glare was any indication, that was far from the truth. Before Corey could say anything else that the younger man could consider damning, Braden took that opportunity to come up behind her and give the teen the mother of all noogies.

As the Doctor watched the scene take place, only one thought came to mind as he slowly shook his head in wry exasperation. Humans.

* * *

Once Braden had finally decided to let go of Corey, the goodbyes started. The Doctor stood off to the side, watching curiously as the teenager was passed around from Andrea, James, and Braden, each one of them hugging her tightly before wishing her good luck and telling her to stay safe. Soon enough, Tessa came downstairs to say her own farewell too, furtively slipping a thick envelope into the Doctor's hand as she passed by him, which he merely glanced at before he stuck it into one of his pockets.

He didn't exactly approve of how Corey's aunt and uncle had decided to handle things, but he wasn't going to say anything about it to them. He had already asked too much of them, so it wasn't his business to tell them how to explain things to Corey when the time came. The Time Lord let out a long sigh as he ran a hand over his messy hair and shook his head. Somehow, he had a feeling that things would not end well once he told Corey what had been decided.

While Corey was still occupied with saying goodbye, Braden took the opportunity to edge over to the Doctor and stand next to him, watching his cousin intently.

"You'd better take care of her, otherwise I swear to God I'll find a way to beat the ever-living shit out of you, alternate dimension or no alternate dimension," he said suddenly, his tone soft as he continued to stare straight ahead. The Doctor glanced over at him before he nodded, leaning back against the wall behind him slightly.

"I know."

"Good."

It was at that moment that Corey was finally finished with her farewells, and she strode over towards them, an excited gleam entering her eyes as she grinned impishly at the Doctor.

"Ready to go?" he asked, and the girl nodded as she went and grabbed her bags, earning a wry look from the older man. Corey noticed the look, and promptly rolled her eyes as she shouldered her backpack.

"Hey, don't look at me," she muttered as she fidgeted slightly while adjusting her grip on the strap of the duffle bag. "If I'd had my way, I would have left with just what I put in my backpack."

"A light packer then?" the Doctor asked in a slightly teasing manner as they went through the back door and out into the yard. Corey chose not to respond as she gave him a look that plainly stated that the answer to his question was obvious, and kept her head down slightly as they hurried over to the TARDIS through the rain that was now starting to come down in sheets.

"Welcome to Wisconsin, where the weather changes at the drop of a hat," she mumbled sarcastically under her breath as she reached up to wipe the water out of her face. The Doctor shot her an amused look from over his shoulder as he pulled his key out of his pocket and unlocked the door to the TARDIS.

"You've never seen Halmania Five, have you?" he responded in an offhanded manner as he shoved the Police Box door open and made an 'after you' gesture. "The weather's never the same for more than two minutes. One second it'll be all bright and sunny out, and then it'll raining buckets the next. Or snowing."

Corey stared at him in amazement before she grinned and stepped inside the TARDIS, looking around her with blatant curiosity. She hadn't had time to really check things out earlier asides from her initial gaping after stepping inside what she had mistakenly deemed a 'phone booth'. Everything had been moving too fast, and she had been more concerned about her aunt and uncle than something that was bigger on the inside. "Sounds like fun."

The Doctor smiled at her before he bounded over to the console with an almost insane amount of enthusiasm, hands moving rapidly as he pressed down on various buttons, pulled levers, and at one point even started to rapidly turn something that looked like… a hand crank? And all the while, the greenish-colored pillar set in the middle of the console throbbed with an odd noise that sounded like the last wheezing breaths of a large animal about to die, some kind of pump moving up and down inside. Corey suddenly recalled her last experience inside the TARDIS, and paled slightly before she backed up and gripped the protrusion of one of the coral columns in a death grip.

Suddenly, she was very glad that she hadn't eaten dinner yet.

"Hold on tight," the Doctor suddenly said right before he started to use some kind of pump located on the side of the console. At first Corey thought that nothing had happened, and then the entire room decided to do a 180.

"Oh holy _shit_!" the girl yelped as she clung on to support strut like it was the last stable thing on the planet, gray eyes wide as she watched the Doctor somehow manage to stay by the control panel without falling. The entire ship started to shake, shuddering violently as though it was under assault by some unseen foe.

And throughout the entire process, the Doctor continued to dash about, flipping switches, pressing buttons, turning dials, pulling levers and muttering encouragements to the machine under his breath. Corey just chose to observe his actions with wide eyes, doing her level best not to distract the man. It was a widely accepted fact in her family that Braden drove like a rally car driver, but she never would have thought in a million years that she would meet someone who actually drove **worse** than her cousin. Further thoughts on the subject were disrupted when what sounded faintly similar to the bastard child of a church bell and a kettle drum started tolling somewhere within the room.

The Doctor looked up, said something reprovingly in the selfsame language that he had used earlier right before the lab had caught fire, and reached into a space under the console. When he pulled out what he had been looking for, Corey quickly came to the conclusion that her new friend was certifiably insane. Who in their right mind would pull out a freaking _mallet_ while in flight on a spaceship?

Apparently the Doctor would, although it could easily be argued that he wasn't exactly in his right mind. Somehow, Corey began to get the sneaking suspicion that he hadn't been joking earlier when he had told her that he had been deemed certifiable on thirty-two planets.

"Behave!" the Doctor shouted to his ship as he grabbed the mallet and hit a panel. Corey just winced and held on for dear life as the TARDIS started to buck around like a deranged bronco that had been stung in the backside by a rabid wasp in retaliation to the blow. She knew that if she opened her mouth right now, something other than words would definitely be coming out. Having a penchant for tossing her cookies while in-flight was something that she _really_ did not want or need to be known for, especially since she barely knew the man.

Why had she agreed to this again? Oh, yeah, she had wanted an adventure, that's why.

Suddenly, the bell stopped tolling, and the room stilled. Corey actually felt her legs give out as she sat down hard on the metal grating covering the floor of the control room, her back pressed up against the coral strut that she had been so desperately gripping earlier. The girl cautiously held up her hands and looked at them, letting out a short, humorless laugh as she realized that she was shaking visibly.

"Oh man, that was one _hell_ of a ride," she cracked when she noticed that the Doctor was looking over at her, his expression one of faint concern. Corey offered him reassuring smile as she got to her feet and brushed off any imaginary dust that may have gotten on her in an attempt to appear nonchalant about the experience. The Doctor stared at her for just a bit longer before he was apparently satisfied that she wasn't hurt from the TARDIS's rather bumpy trip out of her reality.

"That's because we went through the Void," he explained as he stepped away from the control panel, leaving the column in the middle still pumping away as he approached Corey. The girl shot him a confused look as she stuffed her hands into the pockets of her jeans, arching an eyebrow questioningly.

"What's the Void?" Corey asked hesitantly, bewilderment evident in her tone. The Doctor grinned at her, apparently pleased by her question, before he launched full-throttle into lecture mode.

"It's the space between dimensions. There's all sorts of realities around us, different dimensions, billions of parallel universes all stacked up against each other," he explained as he shifted from foot to foot in front of the teenager. "The Void is the space in between, containing absolutely nothing."

Corey stared at the older man for a second, blinked as she attempted to process just what he had told her, and then let a little 'huh' as she accepted the statement. Upon seeing the flabbergasted expression that the Doctor was giving her at her response, she smirked widely at him.

"So, in short, this is a parallel universe?" she asked, effectively cutting off any form of shocked response from the Doctor. He shot her a somewhat offended look, apparently unhappy with the fact that she had just shut down his little 'What?' rant before it had even started, even if she had done it unintentionally.

"Well, it's not so much parallel as it is alternate, by yeah, the principle's the same," the Time Lord admitted as he ran a hand over his hair, making it look even more messed up than it already was. For some reason, he had looked somewhat nervous at the question for a moment before the expression disappeared. Corey frowned slightly, but chalked it up to the fact that they had just finished being tossed around like a couple of tennis balls in a dryer on the 'spin' cycle.

"Fun," she drawled, her tone only slightly sarcastic before she gave the Doctor a cheeky smile as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other. "Is this a normal thing for you then? Popping in and out of realities like this?"

"Nah. I've only done it oh… two times before, and the first was completely on accident. With you, there was a pre-existing rift, so all I had to do was hop on in and, presto! You had a new history teacher."

How was it even remotely possible for someone to talk that fast without even passing out? Or at least taking a breath? Then again, Liz did it all the time, so maybe it was just because they were weird. And hyper. Corey still cringed every time Liz mentioned the words 'drinking contest' and 'Monster' in the same sentence, much less the same conversation. Although, at least Tessa'd had the decency to admit that she had been correct in her earlier predictions after they had finished peeling Liz off of the ceiling. She never wanted to see someone that hyper ever again.

An image sprang to mind, and the teen instantly grimaced. Somehow, she got the feeling that the Doctor and caffeine in any form should never **ever** be combined. And if that somehow _did_ happen, then she wanted to be very _**very**_ far away from the general path of destruction.

It was right about then that she realized that she was earning a very odd look from the Doctor. Apparently her spacing out and slight shudder had been noticed, and she wasn't exactly up to dealing with any potshots about her being easily distracted. So, instead of explaining her line of thought, the girl just decided to go with her usual method of changing the subject; sarcasm.

"Okaaay… you know, you could've warned me about the crashing part," Corey told the older man dryly as she crossed her arms over her chest. He gave her a look that was mixture of exasperation and amusement before he responded with a nonchalant shrug.

"Sorry. Slipped my mind."

The girl gave the Doctor an incredulous look, and her disbelief only increased when he gave her one of those maddening grins in return. She was definitely starting to get the feeling that those odd little smiles of his never meant anything good. That particular feeling only intensified as the Doctor walked back over to the control panel and placed a hand on one of the levers before he turned around slightly to look at her

"So," he began slowly, drawing the word out to make it sound like it was far longer than just two letters, "where do you want to go first?"

* * *

(Lets out massive sigh of relief and collapses on bed, groaning loudly)

Oh man, this chapter took **forever** for me to write. And you have no idea how hard it was for me to do either. Stuff just didn't seem to be coming together correctly, and my laptop also decided to be an idiot. (-cough- the power cord died on me – cough-) Add in the wonderfulness of school, and you get a great stinking pile of exhaustion.

Anyways, just in case you guys are wondering why Corey isn't freaking out over the fact that she's currently in another reality – with no way back to her original one – is simply because she has no clue about what she just agreed to do. She doesn't _know_ that she can't go back home. She honestly believes that if the Doctor was able to come through, then she'll be able to go back home once she's had enough.

As for Trey, he is still very much alive, but his eggs are not. Sorry if I didn't make that one very clear in the last chapter.

Random Cheeses: Why yes, yes she is. But she's also a teenage girl who also happens to have a whole lot of problems as well. Most of the time, the cockiness is a mask to cover up just how very scared she is.

talapadme: Oh yes, the irony of the situation is almost sickening.

Lost child of Gallifrey: No, Corey's 'Professor Snape'-esque math teacher is not related to the Queen of England. He would probably have a conniption fit if he found out that he was. Sister, eh? Cool, I always wanted a sister. I only have an annoying brother. Wanna trade?


	5. Chapter 5: Look At The Stars

_You would not believe your eyes  
As ten million fireflies  
Lit up the world as I fell asleep_

'_Cause then they'd fill the open air  
And leave teardrops everywhere  
You'd think me rude  
But I would just stand and stare_

_I'd like to make myself believe  
That planet Earth turns slowly  
It's hard to say that I'd rather stay  
Awake when I'm asleep  
'Cause everything is never as it seems_

**-Fireflies** by Owl City

"I don't think about risks much. I just do what I want to do. If you gotta go, you gotta go." – Lillian Carter

**Chapter Five:**

**Look At the Stars**

"So, where do you want to go first?"

Corey stared at the Doctor almost incredulously for a moment, stunned at the very suggestion that she had the option of choosing where their next destination was. They had barely just left her home – heck, five minutes ago they had been in another universe, no, another _reality_ – and he wanted to know where she wanted to go. The girl hesitated for a second, hundreds of possibilities flying through her mind. She was in a time machine that could go _anywhere_. She could see the world at any point in time, she could –

Her line of thought was abruptly broken off when her stomach let out a loud growl, causing the girl to give the Doctor a sheepish grin as she stuffed her hands into her pockets.

"Um, anywhere with food sounds good," she joked hesitantly as she shifted back and forth from foot to foot. The Time Lord stared at her consideringly for a moment, obviously mulling something over, before he gave her a wide grin and started to dink around on the console once again.

The request wasn't nearly as exciting as he had initially hoped, but that didn't mean that he couldn't make the girl's first trip with him memorable. Hopefully, if he played things right, he could render her speechless. After all, she hadn't been nearly as surprised by the interior of the TARDIS as he had hoped that she would be.

"Alright then, food it is!" the Doctor announced brightly as he spun a cog rapidly before the pump – Corey was fairly certain now that it was the engine to the TARDIS – started to throb. This time though, there was only a slight feeling of movement, not unlike the gentle rocking of a boat. And then everything came to a stop as the Doctor pulled a lever before he gestured grandly towards the TARDIS doors.

Corey shot him a somewhat wary look, not quite knowing what to expect. The Doctor only grinned encouragingly at her as he gestured again towards the TARDIS doors, making the girl hesitate for a moment before she slowly approached the folding wooden doors that led to the world outside and hesitantly slid them open. As soon as she had, she felt her jaw actually drop as she gaped incredulously at the scene that met her eyes. The sky was a pale mint green, and fluffy golden clouds slowly drifted across it as the warm sunlight shone down, a well-worn black road leading to a massive city that sparkled brightly in the daylight. They were parked a little ways away from the road; far enough away from the path that no one would be bothered by the blue Police Box that had suddenly appeared.

The girl was so busy gaping at the new scenery that she didn't notice the Doctor come up behind her, a satisfied grin that was almost a smirk on his face as he watched her reaction. Yep, he still had it.

"Welcome to Aloragormatrialix, in the year 3528, home to some of the best chefs in the universe," he told Corey proudly. She didn't say anything, although she did manage to force out a stunned noise that sounded somewhat like something resembling the word 'cool' after a few moments of incredulous gaping. After a few moments she straightened up and looked over at the Time Lord with impossibly wide gray eyes.

"I'm on another planet?" she asked faintly, and the Doctor's grin – if at all possible – grew even wider.

"Yep," he said proudly, popping the 'p' as he rocked back on his heels slightly. Corey's eyebrows rose up until they practically merged with her hairline as she looked back out at the alien landscape. Never, not even in her wildest dreams, had she ever thought that she could ever be standing where she was right now.

The very thought made her head spin, and for a moment the girl thought that she would have to sit down as only two words came to mind that could accurately sum up what she was feeling at the moment.

"Holy shit."

"Language," the Doctor said reprovingly, and Corey gave him an incredulous look in response before she shook her head slowly. It looked like she was going to have to try and watch what she said a little more closely than she was used to. That was okay though; it was pretty much along the lines of the 'don't swear in front of your teachers or parents' rule, and the Doctor had been her history professor for a while, so it made sense.

"Man," she whispered as she reached up and brushed her long bangs out of her face, a slight laugh in her tone as she looked around her in awe. "I never… I never thought in a million years that I'd get to go to another planet."

"Well, you're on one now," the older man said brightly, although he had a slightly smug grin on his face as he gestured at the city. "So, shall we?"

For only the briefest of moments, a flicker of uncertainty flashed across Corey's face as she looked at the Doctor. She shifted nervously in her spot before she spread out her arms slightly.

"Um, is what I'm wearing okay?" she asked hesitantly, indicating to the hockey jersey that she was currently wearing over a black t-shirt, as well as the pair of jeans and slightly battered-looking tennis shoes she had on. The Doctor cocked an eyebrow questioningly at her, the look on his face one of slight exasperation, before he lightly kicked at the dirt, effectively drawing the younger girl's attention to one of his off-white Converse-clad feet.

Corey stared at him for a moment before realization dawned upon her, and she let out a wry chuckle. "Oh."

The man wore Converse sneakers with a pinstriped suit and a trench coat. Somehow, she got the feeling that wearing jeans and a hockey jersey was small potatoes compared to that.

Before any further words could be exchanged, the Doctor quickly wrapped his long fingers around the younger girl's right hand. Corey jerked slightly before she looked up at him with wide eyes, obviously not expecting the contact. The Doctor simply flashed her one of his trademark insane grins before he took off like a shot, easily dragging Corey along behind him.

"Now allons-y!"

* * *

Corey normally liked to think that she was fairly hard to rattle. However, being escorted to a table at an alien restaurant by a being that was at least nine feet tall, looked like the offspring of a giraffe and a blowfish, and was an eye-blindingly bright shade of blue, hardly fell under anything that she had ever even remotely considered to be located under the category of normal.

"Here's your table," the alien told them politely as it indicated to small booth, blinking a set of large off-yellow eyes placidly. "Your server will be with you shortly."

The Doctor actually chuckled as he watched the shocked teenager slowly sink into the seat across from him, her eyes wide as she watched the maître'd leave.

"You're gaping," he pointed out cheerfully, and Corey immediately closed her mouth before she directed her attention back at him.

"He's blue," she finally said weakly, almost whispering the statement.

"And you're pink," the Doctor told her somewhat seriously, although he was still smirking at her reaction. "Just imagine how weird you must look to that poor Aloragormais, all pink and hairless. He's probably never seen anything like you before."

Corey frowned slightly at the remark, but decided that it was probably in her best interest not to respond. She honestly had no idea how to respond to anything here. It was like a dream in a way, only better because she knew that it wouldn't just fade away when she woke up. The Doctor interrupted any further thoughts as he slid a menu over towards her, grinning widely at the girl's slightly shocked look when she took in the language that it was written in.

"It's in English," she said with a slight laugh. "We're on another planet, and the menu's written in English."

The Doctor arched an eyebrow before he held up a finger, looking like he was either about to quote some piece of ancient wisdom or slip back into 'teacher lecture' mode. Corey was almost positive that it was going to be the last one.

"Well, actually, it's not in English," he began, and then shrugged. "Well, it only _looks_ like it's in English. The TARDIS is actually translating it for you, using a psychic connection."

Corey blinked before she looked back down at the menu. "Oh, okay. Little weird, but okay."

The girl didn't realize that she had just popped open a can of worms until she caught sight of the look on the Doctor's face. Corey immediately grimaced, and silently contemplated the merits of hiding under the table. The idea was definitely tempting.

"A 'little weird'?" he sputtered indignantly, looking incredibly offended at the comment. "How is that a little weird?"

Corey only managed to offer a somewhat sheepish grin as she shrugged in response, fiddling nervously with the sleeves of her jersey. "Well, your ship's reading my mind and translating stuff so I can understand it. That definitely falls under the category of weird in my book." She paused for a second and glanced back down at her menu before she slid it onto the table, finally deciding to abandon it. "I'm not gonna get all weirded out about it though. Honestly, I'm too tired to be freaked about anything right now, much less have a spaz attack over the fact that someone's spaceship is doing a BabbleFish for me. But mostly this is all really cool."

"Spaceship?" the Doctor gasped, and Corey had to resist the very strong urge to start banging her head against the table. She just had to go and open her mouth. "The TARDIS isn't just a spaceship. She's a sentient being. TARDIS stands for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space, and she's a Time Lord vessel."

Fortunately for her, salvation arrived in the form of their waiter – another one of the Aloragormais – approaching their table.

"Are you ready to order?" he asked politely, and the Doctor was forced to break off his lecture in favor of obtaining food.

The Time Lord placed an order for both of them, especially after Corey pointed out that she had no idea what she was going to be getting. Their food orders were taken, and a somewhat comfortable silence fell between the two before Corey offered the Doctor a somewhat wry grin.

"Hey, you're an alien, right?" she asked suddenly. The Doctor looked mildly surprised by her question before he nodded in agreement.

"Yes, I'm a Time Lord," he responded. Corey hesitated for only a moment before she asked the question that had been nagging at her ever since she had left the science lab.

"So why do you sound British?"

There was a rather awkward silence following the question, and Corey silently berated herself. It seemed that today just wasn't her day when it came to talking to someone without making an ass out of herself. She just seemed to keep on putting her foot into her mouth today. Finally, the Doctor was the one who broke the tension that hung over them as he reached up and rubbed the back of his neck while he frowned thoughtfully.

"Actually, I'm not quite sure about that one," he finally admitted, and Corey gave him a considering look in response.

"Weird…" she muttered before she blanched, and then groaned as she covered her face with her hand. "Crap, sorry. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that."

The Doctor actually chuckled as he watched the flustered teen clench her eyes shut and rub at the bridge of her nose, grinning at her when she opened her eyes and gave him a somewhat sheepish smile.

"That's alright," he told Corey cheerfully. "The only stupid question is the one that isn't asked, or so Albert Einstein used to say. Odd man, him. Absolutely brilliant, mind you, but he couldn't find the simplest things, like his shoes or his hairbrush, to save his life."

Corey, who had just taken a sip of water from the glass that had been on the table in front of her, choked on the liquid. Once she had managed to swallow her water, she looked up at the Doctor with impossibly wide eyes.

"You met Albert Einstein?" she gasped. "Are you kidding me?"

"Nope," the Doctor told her proudly, popping the 'p' as he did so. For some reason, he really seemed to enjoy doing that.

Corey stared at him for a several long moments, her expression curious as she cocked her head slightly to the side. The girl frowned slightly as she mulled things over, and then started to chuckle softly as she lowered her head and dragged her right hand down her face. A low laugh emerged from her throat as she shook her head before she looked back up at the Doctor, giving him a wry smile in response to his questioning look.

"You know, for some reason I keep thinking that nothing will surprise me anymore, but you keep pulling stuff from right out of left field that pretty much bowls me over," she offered with a somewhat sardonic grin, her bangs falling into her face haphazardly. "Do you just enjoy rendering people speechless or something?"

The Doctor gave the girl an innocent-looking smile in response, and Corey rolled her eyes upwards as she let out a soft sound of annoyance. Apparently she had just hit the nail right on the head with that particular comment.

It was yet another odd thing to add into the already overflowing box of mysteries concerning the Doctor. And the sad thing was she hadn't even really known him for a full day. Corey was pretty sure that she already starting to feel the effects of the beginnings of one **hell** of a stress headache.

* * *

In a dark room somewhere within the restaurant, a bulky figure reclined comfortably in a padded leather chair in front of a series of television screens, each one of them connected to a different security camera placed about the building. However, most normal televisions wouldn't have little tags indicating species and planet of origin attached to the people that were being observed. The figure – an older, rather overweight Aloragormais – chuckled softly as he watched the people milling about his restaurant, eating and conversing to their heart's content.

This was his world, something that he had built from the ground up, and he enjoyed watching people consume the food. Their satisfaction was addicting, almost like a drug. It pleased him to know that he was the source of their contentment, especially with all of his experience involving food.

Suddenly, the label following one of the newest customers that had just entered his establishment flashed mauve, drawing the Aloragormais' attention to the bipedal female that was trailing in the wake of a rather energetic, older, eccentric-looking male. They looked like they were the same species, but the bio-filter indicated that this was definitely not the case. The male was of an unknown species, something that the system hadn't been able to identify yet, but the female –

His pale yellow eyes widened in disbelief as he gaped at the digital image of the female, his stunned mind trying to comprehend what he was seeing. It was impossible, and yet, the proof was standing right there in front of him.

"A human," he whispered fervently as he stared avidly at the flat image of the young female, not quite daring to believe his eyes. "Computer, pull up a full scan of visitor 247."

A ¼ size digital 3D projection of the target in question sprang into existence on the console in front of the blue blowfish hybrid, and he immediately leaned back in his chair as the computer system listed out facts for him.

"_Visitor 247:247 out of 352 current customers. Species: Human. Planet of Origin: Earth. Age: 17 years, 3 months, and approximately 29 days. Height: 5 Earth feet, and 8 inches. Weight: 127 pounds. Gender: Female."_

The Aloragormais cocked an eyebrow before he laced his stumpy fingers together thoughtfully, a small smile making its way across his face.

"Fascinating," he whispered in an almost reverent manner. He remained seated for a few moments as he scrutinized the slowly rotating image, taking in all of the details of the human girl's appearance with a practiced eye. For some reason, her gray eyes were the thing that drew the most attention. They were innocuous enough, but still unusual, at least if the tales that he'd heard from the Slitheen were any indication. According to them, brown was the most common color, followed shortly by varying shades of blue and green. Gray, black, and violet were also included in the spectrum, but those were exceedingly rare, and anything outside of those selected eye colors were never found in the human race.

So, not only was his newest customer a human, but she was rare one as well. Fascinating.

His small smirk slowly transformed into a triumphant grin, and he immediately reached out and pressed down on the intercom button that connected to the ear-buds in all of his employee's ears before he spoke aloud.

"Gripak, this is Ikrilais. I want you to go to table 49 and bring the female sitting there to me. Just the female. Find a way to distract the male if you can, preferably in a way that's non-fatal. I don't want any more attention drawn to the situation than necessary."

Ikrilais gave a small self-satisfied smirk as he released the button and leaned back in his chair.

Finally, after all this time, he had found one.

* * *

Dinner hadn't come yet, and Corey was still bored out of her mind as she listened to the Doctor go off on a rant about how time travel was nothing like it was depicted in _Back to the Future_. She had accidentally made a joke about him being like Doc Brown, and things had just kind of snowballed from there. Right now, she was seriously considering just getting up and leaving for the bathroom in the hopes that the Doctor would be done by the time she returned. Unfortunately, the only thing stopping her was the fact that she didn't know where the bathroom was, or what it would even look like here.

So that meant that she had to sit there and listen to the Doctor rant. And the really depressing part was that she couldn't just threaten to duct tape his mouth shut like she could with her cousins or Liz so he would stop.

"-and, the idea that a flux capacitor, even if it _was_ correctly engineered, could function off of garbage, is completely and utterly ridiculous! It would take-"

Fortunately for Corey, the Doctor's rant was rather opportunely cut off as a distraction in the form of a rather enthusiastic-looking Aloragormais approached their table.

"Welcome, new visitors!" he proclaimed brightly as he came to a stop in front of them, earning a cocked eyebrow from Corey as she looked at the slightly spastic alien curiously. "Allow me to extend to you our heartfelt thanks for visiting our humble planet. And might I enquire as to your origins?"

The teenager merely stared at the blue-skinned being in complete and utter confusion while the Doctor immediately slipped into his 'harmless, babbling person' mode. "You're welcome. And how are you?" The Time Lord looked at the Aloragormais speculatively for a second before he frowned slightly as he processed the last part of the wait staff's request. "What?"

"Oh, I'm sorry," the blue blowfish-giraffe hybrid apologized in a somewhat insincere manner as he inclined his head slightly. "I merely wanted to know your origins, since we pride ourselves on having visitors coming from every corner of the galaxy. Also, our establishment has not yet been graced with your particular species before, so naturally we're all a little curious. Unfortunately, our bio-scanner at the door is currently broken, so I felt the need to come and inquire in person."

Corey and the Doctor both exchanged slightly bewildered looks, although the Doctor looked more excited about the situation than confused.

"Ah," he said as he offered the server a slightly maniac grin before he reached into the pocket of his trench coat and pulled out his wallet with the piece of psychic paper inside. "I'm the Doctor, and this is Corey Matthews."

The Aloragormais looked as though he could honestly care less about who they were as he gave them a flat stare in response, his supposedly enthusiastic attitude disappearing without a trace even as he managed to give them both a polite smile. "Charmed."

"So, what's the problem with the scanner?" the Doctor asked suddenly after a moment of awkward silence, shifting in his seat with barely restrained interest. His actions strongly reminded Corey of an overeager child trying desperately to give the impression that they weren't as excited as they seemed to be, causing her to duck her head in order to hide her smirk.

Was this really the same man who had taught her history class only a few days ago?

"The bio-scanner has been acting up for a few days now, but it finally crashed today," the Aloragormais explained in a somewhat offhanded manner, looking suitably embarrassed as he gave a rueful shrug. "Made quite a mess when it did too."

Corey cocked an eyebrow curiously as she leaned back in her seat as the Doctor stood up, an eager expression on his face as he smiled at the blue-skinned alien.

"I'm a bit of a tinkerer, me," he offered suddenly. "I could take a look at your scanner; see what's making it act up."

"That would be much appreciated," the Aloragormais said as he bowed slightly, an odd sight to see, especially considering since it was coming from a nine-foot tall spiny blue giraffe. Corey was forced to repress a soft snicker as a mental image of a giraffe from a zoo performing a similar action came to mind, and quickly looked away so that no one could see the amusement on her face. She really did not want to accidentally offend someone, especially seeing as she was the alien here.

However, her actions somehow caught the Aloragormais' attention, and he turned to look at her with a set of almost neon yellow eyes. Corey had to force herself not to flinch as she stared at the cobalt-skinned alien with almost nervous apprehension. His eyes looked way too much like Trey's for her comfort, although they fortunately lacked the reptilian slits that the Quisforth had possessed. Thank goodness for small mercies, otherwise she probably would have either thrown something sharp and pointy at the server, or at least gotten the hell out of there.

Definitely not a first impression that she wanted to make.

"If you wish, I can arrange for your… companion to take a tour of the kitchens while you take a look at the scanner," the alien offered with a small smile as he tilted his head slightly to the side before he returned his attention to Corey. "Our kitchens are on a level that not even the Kallians on Neurot can top. Just last month, we received a top review in the _Interplanetary Cuisine_ magazine, as well as the Emril award."

Well, she hadn't been expecting that.

"Cool," Corey said simply before she glanced over at the Doctor, silently seeking permission. The almost blinding grin that she received in response was the only answer that she was suddenly hauled out of her seat by the obscenely cheerful man.

"Well then, what are we waiting for?" the Doctor asked eagerly as he looked over at the Aloragormais, who glanced over at the door before he made an odd motion with one of his hands. Well, the weird blue black-hoofed tipped digits that passed as hands for him. It was interesting to see how the species functioned, especially since the hard tips of their fingers were probably slippery.

Another one of the blue giraffe-blowfish hybrids approached them, shifting in his spot nervously as he looked over at Corey with unbridled curiosity. If appearances were anything to go by, he was probably somewhere around the same age as she was. And if that wasn't an indication, the rebellious teenage-esque scowl on the alien's face when he looked at his superior was definitely a clear sign.

"You wanted me, Gripak?" he asked as he stood there. Gripak merely smiled, although it was slightly strained, before he indicated over towards the Doctor.

"Kal, this is the Doctor. He has graciously volunteered to take a look at the bio-scanner. If you would please escort him to the control room, I would greatly appreciate it."

Kal made an odd noise in the back of his throat – something that sounded like a wheezing elephant blowing on a police whistle – before he nodded in agreement and motioned for the Doctor to follow him. The lanky man looked back and gave Corey a reassuring smile.

"Have fun," he quipped cheerfully as he reached out and ruffled her hair fondly. "This is what visiting another place is all about, anyways. Seeing the local culture, eating the food, mangling the language, all those good things."

And then he was gone, trotting alongside Kal with an almost insane amount of enthusiasm as he headed for the control room. Corey watched him go for a moment before she covered her face with her right hand and started to chuckle.

"Oh man," she chortled as she shook her head. "That guy…"

She received a questioning look from Gripak, and she just shook her head as she waved off whatever inquiry he was about to make. Sometimes, it was just better not to explain the strange way that her mind worked; it usually resulted in less awkward questions that way.

"So, let's get this show on the road, eh?" she asked sheepishly as she looked up at Gripak. The giraffe-blowfish hybrid merely cocked what passed as an eyebrow for his species before he stepped in front of Corey and headed back towards the kitchens. The girl looked at him hesitantly for a moment before she shook her head and followed after the alien, trying to ignore the nagging sensation that she was missing something.

Meh, it was probably nothing. She was just being paranoid. It wasn't like everything in the universe was out to get her.

Just Trey.

Corey gave a soft sigh as she shook her head, not really paying attention to where Gripak was leading her. It kind of sucked to realize that her first encounter with an alien species – well, the Doctor, actually – consisted mainly with something trying to kill her.

But so far, she was actually having a lot of fun here. There was so much to look at, and everything was so different from home. Wisconsin was pretty cool and all, and Michigan had been nice too, but neither one of them had anything on this place. Maybe it was the sheer strangeness of the planet, and how everything was so out of this world. Not to mention the fact that the native species looked like blue, spiny giraffes, which was pretty interesting in and of itself.

Suddenly, Gripak came to a halt in front of her, and Corey almost plowed right into him before she looked up in time to come to a stop.

"We're here," the Aloragormais announced curtly as he looked over his shoulder at the teen, who stared back at him with obvious curiosity. What the hell was up with him? He was the one who had offered to show her the kitchens in the first place.

Corey looked warily around her, and then realized that wherever she was, it definitely wasn't the kitchens. The girl made a soft noise in the back of her throat as she glanced around at the barren, steel walls that were so radically different from the warm and inviting atmosphere of the rest of the restaurant, her eyes wide. There were no stoves, no cooking implements of any kind, and most definitely not any food. There was nothing except a barren hallway that led straight down to a single door, with a small lone corridor branching off on the right just after the door. Right now, every instinct that she had was screaming at her to get the hell out of there and find the Doctor. Something was definitely not right about this whole setup.

Before Corey could jerk away, Gripak suddenly reached out and grabbed her by the front of her jersey before he dragged her over towards a large sliding door set into one of the metal walls.

"Hey, let me go!" Corey yelped as she tried to squirm out of the alien's grasp, only to have Gripak roughly jerk her forward, making her head hit the wall in front of her as he hastily pressed a series of numbers on the keypad by the door. Her vision swam as her legs felt like they had just been turned to jelly, and she could barely make out Gripak's voice as he said something.

"Shut up, you idiot girl," he growled irritably as the door slid open before he roughly propelled her into the room beyond, where Corey fell into a heap on the carpeted floor. "Ikrilais, I brought you what you asked for."

"Thank you, Gripak," a somewhat oily voice said from somewhere within the darkened interior of the room. "You may go now."

"As you wish." With a deep bow, the Aloragormais backed out of the room before the door slid shut, cutting off the only source of light. Corey let out a low groan as she slowly pushed herself up into a kneeling position before she shook her head in an attempt to clear the fog from her brain.

Okay, that definitely had not been fun.

"So, you're finally here," the voice from earlier – hadn't Gripak called it Ikrilais? – said smoothly, a definite smug undertone evident in it. Corey let out a low growl in the back of her throat as she squinted, trying to force her eyes to adjust to the sudden lack of light. All of the hair along her spine prickled as a wave of nagging doubt washed over her.

Normal people don't go out of their way to lure someone into a dark, locked room just so they can have a nice, friendly chat with you over a cup of tea. Not unless they were either a politician, or Hannibal Lector.

"Yeah, and your point would be?" she shot back as she forced herself to her feet, brushing off the front of her jeans reflexively. "It wasn't like I was given much of a choice there."

The person who had ordered her to be brought into the dark room broke out into a wave of condescending chuckles, apparently finding her sardonic comment amusing. Corey bristled instinctively at the derisive tone in Ikrilais' laughter as she clenched her hands tightly.

"The Slitheen neglected to mention just how amusing your race was," Ikrilais finally said offhandedly as he apparently got his amusement under control. Corey made a low noise in the back of her throat that sounded suspiciously like Dirk when he was going after a raccoon, or even one of the neighborhood cats, as she glared venomously at the darkened area where Ikrilais' voice was coming from. Now that her eyes had adjusted to the lack of light in the room, she could make out the faint blue glow of a darkened computer screen coming from that particular corner.

The girl remained silent as she stood stiff-backed in her spot, gray eyes narrowed in defiant anger as she kept her jaw clenched tightly in an effort to restrain herself from saying something stupid. She'd had more than enough near-death experiences for one day, thank you very much.

"Well, aren't you going to say something?" Ikrilais asked after a few moments of tense silence. "No 'why did you bring me here' or 'what are you going to do to me'? I thought all humans couldn't keep their mouths shut when something they didn't understand was going on."

The girl scowled, and even though she knew that the creep couldn't see her, she cocked her head slightly to the side. Whoever this nutjob was, he sounded like wanted to play clichéd bad guy. So, she had two options: either play the dumb, scared shitless kid who had no clue what in the hell was going on, or man it up (figuratively) and let this a-hole know that she wasn't going to let herself be cowed. At the moment, the second option sounded pretty good, especially since this chucklehead thought that he was being clever by acting like a hokey James Bond villain.

"How about you show me your face, and maybe then I'll talk," Corey said irritably before she proceeded to mutter the rest of what she was thinking under her breath. "And if you look anything like Hannibal Lector or Freddy freaking Kruger, I am so outta here."

Another condescending chuckle came from the being's direction before the sound of fingers snapping echoed throughout the room, and Corey was forced to slam her eyes shut as light suddenly flooded the room. The girl muttered a quiet profanity under her breath as she slowly opened her eyes in order to allow them to adjust to the now-lit room, and then proceeded to silently wish that she was anywhere but there.

Sitting in the odd-looking chair behind a large polished steel desk was an incredibly obese Aloragormais, an appraising look in his acid-yellow eyes as he sat there with his fingers laced together thoughtfully. Corey automatically drew herself up to her full height of 5'8 as she forced her face into a neutral mask, her entire body tense. If this freaky jerk wanted to scare the shit out of her, then there was no way in hell that she was going to give him any kind of satisfaction.

Time to start channeling Dean Winchester. Again.

"So, why don't you tell me why you dragged me here for no damn reason – without lying through your ass this time?" she said acidly, her eyes narrowing as she gave Ikrilais a look that would have made full-grown men quail in fear.

The alien looked at her in obvious interest before he burst out laughing.

"Oh my, how terrifying!" he chortled as he covered his face with a blue hand, leaning against the polished expanse of his desk for support. "How anyone can find your species threatening is beyond me! With that hair, and that face, you're more likely to be someone's pet than a sentient species capable of functioning on its own! And that scowl is just too cute for words."

Corey twitched slightly at the remark, but forced herself to bite back any appropriately scathing remarks that came to mind. One thing was definitely obvious; whoever this guy was, he was most definitely off his meds. Or something. Normal people did not act like this.

Then again, what was normal for this species?

"You wanna tell me what's going on in that freaky head of yours?" she finally asked irritably as she crossed her arms over her chest and fixed the blue extraterrestrial with a skeptical glare. Ikrilais finally managed to get a hold of himself long enough to stop chuckling and removed his hand from his face.

"Tell me, girl, have you ever traveled out beyond the miserable little rock that is your planet?" he asked in a would-be conversational tone. Corey cocked an eyebrow as she gave the Aloragormais an appropriately wary look. Where in the hey had that question come from?

"Nope, this is the first time," she admitted reluctantly. "And by the way, you're really not doing much for your P.R. here, bub. I mean, dragging unsuspecting guests off to who knows where just so you can play twenty questions with them isn't exactly good material for impressing people." Corey shifted slightly in her spot as she frowned. "In fact, all it's gonna do is piss them off. Especially if your flunkies decide to do the whole head-bashing thing on them. That one's definitely gonna result in some seriously crappy tips."

Ikrilais smiled widely at her before he entered something into his computer, and the lights dimmed down slightly before a 3-D projection of a solar system was cast onto the room. In spite of herself, Corey's eyes grew wide in wonder as she gaped at a slowly rotating blue planet that rested in the air not even three feet in front of her. This was unlike anything she'd ever seen before. She'd never seen Earth like this before, like something far-off and unreachable, like the moon.

It was awe-inspiring in some ways, and absolutely terrifying in others.

Especially since she was currently trapped in a room with someone who she kept expecting to say "No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die".

"Earth, located far off in the remote expanses of the Milky Way galaxy, is hardly accessible to those of us here on Aloragormatrialix," Ikrilais began, his words sounding like a well-rehearsed speech that he had practiced many times before. "The great human empire is expanding, and yet they have not managed to extend their reach out this far at the current time."

Corey gave the Aloragormais a somewhat skeptical look, her expression clearly indicating that she was more than a little annoyed with the being's actions and cryptic words.

"And your point would be?" she drawled as she spun her hand in an obvious 'get on with it' motion.

Ikrialis merely gave her a condescending smile that immediately set the girl on edge as he reached out and pressed a button on his keyboard. The 3-D image of Earth grew in size until the entire room looked like a bustling street in some metropolis. Corey's eyes grew wide at the droves of people that flooded the street, unintentionally jumping when a projection of a person walked straight through her like she wasn't even there. She had never seen this many people in one place before in her life.

"The human population is rapidly expanding," Ikrilais recited as he watched the holographic crowd of rapidly moving people with an odd gleam in his eyes. "As of this point, there are approximately twelve planets hosting permanent human colonies, with more on the way, as well as countless space stations. The depths of space are no longer infinite for the human race." The corner of his mouth twitched upwards into a strange sort of half-sneer before he slapped his palm down on a button, and crowds vanished, letting the room fall back into a dim gloom. "Fairly impressive for a species that is little more than a race of cattle blessed with the gift of space travel."

Corey glowered at Ikrilais darkly before she held up her right fist and deliberately extended her middle finger. The alien looked somewhat startled by the obviously obscene gesture, and Corey gave him a humorless smirk before she allowed the expression to vanish.

"Eat me," she snarled as she glared daggers at the Aloragormais. Approximately two seconds later, once her brain caught up with her mouth, she realized just what she had said, and her eyes widened in horror as she noted Ikrilais' smug grin. And the slightly less than normal look in his eyes as he looked over her appraisingly. "Oh no no no wait wait wait, you actually might."

The look that he gave her in response was the same look that starving people gave a nice juicy steak.

"I've heard from multiple sources that humans are an incomparable delicacy," Ikrilais stated in an offhanded tone before he gave the girl an oily smile. "Never once did I actually think that I would have the opportunity to try it."

Corey blinked as she tried to find a way to rationalize what the extraterrestrial had just said, and ended coming up with nothing.

"You… want to eat… humans?" she finally asked weakly. He nodded once in agreement before he gave her a hungry smile.

The teen grimaced before she took a precautionary step backwards, a single comment coming to mind before it unintentionally tumbled from her lips.

"Oh, you sick puppy."

Ikrialis only smirked at her in response. Corey stared at the Aloragormais incredulously for a few seconds, a chill running down her spine as she realized just how much trouble she was in, before she did what her instincts had been screaming at her to do for the past ten minutes.

She got the hell out of Dodge.

Before Ikrilais could react, the teen was at the door to the room, and she promptly slammed the palm of her hand down on the button that opened the door before she bolted out into the hallway, leaving the alien behind to fumble uselessly for the controls at his desk before he accidentally overbalanced his swivel chair and tumbled to the floor. An enraged bellow followed as Ikrilais expressed his frustration at his own less than stellar reflexes, sounding suspiciously like the bastardized offspring of a semi horn and a kicked dog in the process. Corey didn't even bother to look behind her as she ran as fast as she could down the hallway.

Apparently today was just not her day. This was the second time that something had either tried to kill her or eat her within a span of twenty-four hours. The girl felt a slightly hysterical chuckle start to well up from somewhere within her chest, and she roughly forced it back so she could focus on the infinitely more important matter of running like hell. A series of loud, echoing footsteps reverberated in the hallway behind her, and she realized that Ikrilais had gotten out of his office so he could chase after her himself.

Okay, so the fat, psycho alien dude had chosen to get up off his ass and chase after her. Now she definitely needed to keep running.

The hallway that she had chosen ended at a two-way split, and Corey immediately turned right, hoping that it would at least lead her back out into the main part of the restaurant. Soon she hit another intersection, and then another. Each time she chose to turn right, and each time she hit another intersection she was met with only a two-way fork. The girl let out a frustrated groan as she continued to bolt down the hallway, and rounded the corner at top speed.

Before she could register what she was seeing, the girl managed to run right into someone who was coming around the corner from the other way, and proceeded to end up flat on her face with the person she had run into lying on top of her. Stars danced across her line of vision, and she barely registered that the person had gotten up off of her as she propped herself up into a kneeling position and shook her head in an effort to clear away the fog. Corey let out a low groan as she looked up at the person that she had plowed into, and was more than a little relieved to see that it was the Doctor. The Time Lord looked more than a little surprised to see her there, and he opened his mouth to say something, only to have Corey cut him off.

"You're not gonna try to kill me, are you?" she asked cautiously as she stood up, wincing slightly as the movement pulled at the skinned knee that had resulted when she had crashed into the floor. The Doctor gave her a slightly concerned look as he reached out and helped her steady herself before she fell over.

"No."

Corey couldn't help it. She cracked a relieved grin before she let out a long sigh and looked the older man right in the eyes.

"Good. 'Cause that would be awkward."

The Doctor arched an eyebrow at her comment before he frowned slightly. "What are you doing here?"

"Um, try running away from the psycho who apparently thinks that I'll taste good," she said flatly, giving the Doctor the evil eye. "You know, when you told me that this planet served gourmet food, you never mentioned that human was on the list."

The Doctor's jaw dropped as he gaped at Corey for a few moments before he started to sputter indignantly.

"What?" he stammered before his voice rose up slightly in pitch. "What? What?"

Corey stared at him with a deadpan expression on her face for several seconds before she arched an eyebrow slightly, the rest of her face not even changing in the tiniest bit. She crossed her arms over her chest before she finally rolled her eyes and shot the Doctor an annoyed look.

"Before you ask, yes, I'm being serious. The nutjob who pulled me into his office called humans a race of 'cattle somehow blessed with space travel'. Somehow, that doesn't exactly sound like a compliment to me, no matter how you put it."

The Doctor continued to sputter for a few more seconds before he stopped and fixed the girl with a somewhat bemused look. "Why?

Corey's jaw dropped as she gaped incredulously at the Time Lord before she started to stutter out an indignant protest. "I don't know, but if you really want to, you can go ask him yourself. I, on the other hand, will be hiding on the TARDIS, preferably under the first bed I can find."

"And why would you do that?"

"Have you ever tried to haul someone out from under a bed? It's next to freaking impossible, especially when they're in the perfect position to kick you in the face."

Before the Doctor could make any sort of a remark on her very sarcastic commentary, an odd whirring noise at the other end of the hallway caught their attention. Corey froze, all of the hair on the back of her neck standing straight up before she slowly turned around. At first she saw nothing that really caught her attention, at least until three wheeled robots slid out from beyond the corner. They kind of looked kind of like one of the droids from Star Wars, or maybe even Number 5 from Short Circuit, only a bit more… well, new-looking. And definitely less bulky.

The Doctor looked at them for a second before he grinned broadly.

"Hello!" he chirped as he straightened up and turned around to face the androids, pausing only long enough to shoot Corey a smug look that plainly said 'I told you so'. "Sorry, got a bit lost there. I don't suppose that you came to show us the way back-"

SHING!

Corey actually felt the blood drain from her face as all three robots suddenly had about four or five foot-long carving knives emerge from each of their hand-things, and she unsteadily took a step backwards as they started to roll towards them.

"Holy shit," she croaked weakly. The Doctor was too shocked to even correct her on her language as he gaped slack-jawed at the approaching robots. Corey hesitated for only a second before she reached out and grabbed the back of the older man's jacket, yanking on it as hard as she could to snap him out of his stupor.

"Run!" she ordered when he turned around to look at her before she took off like the very fires of Hell were after her. Within seconds, the Doctor was right besides her as he joined the teen in the frantic dash to escape the crazy kitchen appliances armed with meat cleavers.

"Now do you believe me?" she snapped as they both bolted down the hallway, with the droids increasing their pace as they followed after them. The Doctor shot her an incredibly offended look in response, only to recoil under the furious glare that the girl gave him.

"I never said that I didn't. And I didn't want to jump to conclusions."

"Yeah, well, next time try to remember that I don't lie about stupid shit that might end up getting someone killed!" Corey retorted hotly through gritted teeth as she returned her attention to the hallway in front of her.

"Must you always swear like that?"

"Only when I'm stressed. Or in a life and death situation, which usually involves stress."

"And the sarcasm?"

"I saved that specifically for you."

The Doctor frowned at the comment but didn't say anything, seeing as he wasn't really in the mood for an 'I told you so'. Unfortunately for both of them, an even bigger 'I told you so' arrived in the form of several rather rough-looking Aloragormais standing around another corner, all of them armed with various sharp and pointy kitchen implements that were usually reserved for cutting meat. Corey and the Doctor were both forced to skid to a halt before they smashed into the group, with Corey coming to a full stop just barely a foot away from one the aliens before she was rather unceremoniously jerked away from them by the Doctor, who stepped in front of her almost immediately. The gesture, while noble, was rendered absolutely useless a few seconds later when the Johnny 5's gone homicidal rolled around the corner, all of them wielding their weapons of choice.

A not-so-subtle jab in the back via a bony teenage elbow alerted the Doctor to this fact, and he let out a long sigh before he glanced over at the assembled Aloragormais.

"I don't suppose that I can just ask you politely to let us go?" he asked. A series of harsh laughs was his answer before one of the aliens stepped forward and pointed a meat cleaver at Corey, sneering arrogantly at her.

"You, we don't need," he growled as he looked over at the Time Lord dismissively before he indicated at the adolescent human once again. "She stays."

"Fantastic," the girl in question muttered snidely under her breath. "Instead of eating dinner, I'm going to _be_ dinner. Just what I always wanted. Now I can finally say that I've achieved my sole goal in life."

The Doctor shot her a sharp look that plainly said that she wasn't helping matters at all before he returned his attention to the Aloragormais, while Corey kept a wary eye on the droids. Now there was a funny thought: keep an eye on the droids. It sounded like something that someone out of Star Wars, or maybe even Stargate would suggest. When exactly had her life turned into some weird science fiction movie?

Corey recognized the rising feeling of hysteria for what it was, and promptly squashed it down as hard as she could before it had a chance to surface. Even she knew that if she lost her cool now she'd be screwed.

"Why won't you let her leave?" the Doctor asked in a no-nonsense tone, effectively snapping the girl out of her thoughts as she glanced over at him uncertainly. He wasn't mad, not yet. But if the man's tense posture was anything to go by, it probably wouldn't take much for him to get more than a little cranky.

"Boss's orders," another one of the Aloragormais grunted. "He doesn't like fresh meat escaping."

Corey felt positively ill at that statement. The way he said it made it sound like they'd done this kind of thing before. She knew that she was the first human that they'd tried to cut up and serve, but humans obviously weren't the only sentient species out there in the universe. The girl winced, and was suddenly insanely thankful of the fact that they hadn't eaten anything yet.

Apparently the Doctor had a similar thought, because the look on his face transformed into one that made Corey want to run as far away as she could and hide under the first appropriate bed that she found. The look in the Doctor's eyes was old, far older than anything that she had ever seen, or could even comprehend, and the burning anger that smoldered deep within them scared the ever-living crap out of her. The only thing that enabled Corey to remain standing next to the man and not run off screaming like a little girl –and even then it was still a close thing – was the fact that she knew that he wasn't mad at her.

"You've done this before." The way he said it meant that it definitely wasn't a question, and anyone who valued their life had better tell him the truth before he made the sky rain fire or something equally ominous.

One of the Aloragormais – who was either very brave or incredibly stupid – stepped forward and sneered at the Time Lord.

"Why do you care? It's not like they were worth anything when they were alive anyways."

The Doctor went rigid at the careless statement, and Corey cringed. Apparently this idiot had either been skipped over on the day they had been handing out brains, or his mother had dropped him on his head as a child. All current evidence pointed towards the latter.

"They were sentient beings," the Doctor growled. "You had no right-!"

"And you have no right to interfere with how I run my restaurant," a familiar voice rumbled from behind them. The girl flinched involuntarily as she recognized Ikrialis' voice, and the Doctor made a low noise of irritation in the back of his throat as he glanced over at the extraterrestrial that was standing nonchalantly among the knife-wielding droids.

Ikrialis didn't even blink as he met the Doctor's outraged stare evenly before the corner of his mouth twitch upwards into a slightly amused smirk. Corey recognized that smile. It was the same kind of smile a dirty politician or Zachariah gave you right before they force-fed you some line of bullshit, telling you the entire time that it was really caviar.

"Doctor, wasn't it?" he asked nonchalantly, and the other man responded with a curt nod. "Let's make a deal. All you have to do is leave your little tag-along behind, and I'll let you leave here without a fuss. I already know that you're not human, so it's not as though she has any real use to you, much less any form of emotional attachment."

If looks could kill, the one that the Doctor gave him in response would have slaughtered an entire civilization in one go.

Surprisingly, Corey was the one who broke stalemate between the two aliens in the stifling silence that followed in the wake of Ikrialis' rather disturbing and incredibly insulting statement. The girl caught everyone's attention when she suddenly stepped out from behind the Doctor and stared steadily at the Aloragormais, her gray eyes narrowed in a decidedly unfriendly manner as she stood straight-backed in front of her 'travel guide'. She didn't say anything for a few moments, waiting until Ikrialis started to shift uncomfortably in his spot as she glared at him.

"… I hope that there is a very special place in hell for you," she finally growled, her tone icy.

"Hell?" Ikrialis chuckled as he raised an eyebrow skeptically before he gave Corey a condescending smile. "I don't believe in such a useless concept."

The Doctor didn't say anything as he once again put himself in front of Corey, staring intently at the Aloragormais that was currently taunting her.

"You can still stop this, you know," he offered. "All you have to do is stop hurting other people, and I won't bring this whole place down around your ears."

"Are you threatening me, Doctor?"

"No, I'm promising you. There's a difference."

"And who are you to tell me what I can and can't do in my own restaurant?" Ikrialis sneered as he gave the Time Lord a dismissive sniff. "Why should I end a profitable venture simply on your say-so? You have no input in how I run my business, and if you have any form of common sense whatsoever, you'll accept my offer before I reach the end of my patience."

The Doctor didn't move while the blue giraffe-blowfish hybrid watched him intently. Suddenly his hand emerged from the pocket in his trench coat, a familiar-looking mutant screwdriver with a glowing blue tip clenched tightly in his hand. He smiled grimly at Ikrialis, who looked taken aback when he realized that he had a piece of hardware pointed at him in a manner strongly reminiscent of a weapon.

"You want to know who I am?" he asked. "I'm the Doctor. And I can and will shut you down. All I have to do is say one word, and your whole little business will come crumbling down around your spiny little blue ears." He paused for a second and looked thoughtful before he returned his attention back to the stunned alien. "Actually, make that four words. Four words, and there will be nothing left here."

"You're bluffing," Ikrialis growled. "You don't have a clue about what you're doing."

The Doctor smiled almost innocently in response. "I'm a very dangerous fellow when I don't know what I'm doing."

As soon as he had said that he pressed down on a button on his sonic screwdriver, aiming the tip directly at the droids next to the Aloragormais. Sparks instantly started shooting out of various joints on the machines before all three of the droids went completely haywire, flailing around wildly as they made odd screeching noises. The giraffe-hybrid's cronies all yelped before they rushed forward to assist their employer, who was caught right in the middle of the entire fiasco.

Corey started to back away, only to have a callused hand wrap around one of her own. The girl stopped short before she looked over at the Doctor, who grinned reassuringly at her before he pulled her away from the scene, carefully going around the corner closest to them before they both broke into a run. Neither one of them stopped until they made it out a back door that was located near the food delivery bay, and even then it was only for a few seconds so Corey could catch her breath.

Once they had reached the hill where they had left the TARDIS, the Doctor went ahead a little so he could open the door. Corey mutely followed him inside before she unceremoniously flopped down on the metal grating covering the floor right next to her bags, letting a long sigh escape from her lips as she leaned back against her duffle bag.

"Let's never do that again," she muttered. "Ever."

The older man glanced over his shoulder at her and frowned slightly, pausing from something that he was typing into the onboard computer that was mounted on the console. Within seconds, they were back in flight once again, with the TARDIS making the familiar wheezing noise from before as its pump moved up and down steadily.

"Are you alright?" he asked. Corey gave him a long, disbelieving look before she offered him a wry grin and tilted her head to the side slightly.

"I'm good now, especially since we're away from the psychopath," she admitted with a shrug. "I was having fun up until the point where I got kidnapped by some lunatic that wanted to eat me." She paused for a moment before she let out an exasperated snort and flopped back against her duffle bag, ignoring the uncomfortable edges of something inside jabbing at a spot between her shoulder blades. "And we still haven't eaten anything yet."

The Doctor offered her a slightly abashed grin in response to her wry comment before he turned around and returned his attention back to the little computer screen on the console. Corey allowed herself to just kind of zone out as she lounged against her duffle bag, relishing the feeling of the tension slowly leaving her body as she relaxed. Her eyes were just slowly starting to drift closed when the Doctor reached into the pocket of his trench coat to pull something out, and a thick white envelope fluttered out when he withdrew his hand, coming to a rest right at her feet. The girl let out a soft sigh as she straightened up and leaned forward to retrieve the envelope, fully intending on giving it back to the Doctor.

However, when she saw the name printed neatly across the front of the white paper in familiar handwriting, she froze.

_Coraline Jennifer Matthews_.

Her full name – which she never, _ever_, used – was written on the front of the envelope, in her aunt's almost inhumanly neat printing. Corey frowned as she gingerly picked up the envelope with her thumb and forefinger, glancing up at the Doctor as she did so. Why would he have a letter addressed to her in his coat pocket?

She frowned slightly before she flipped the folded little parcel around, her eyebrows shooting upwards almost instantly when she saw that the envelope hadn't been sealed. Apparently her aunt had intended for her to read this right away. That still didn't explain why the Doctor had it in his pocket though. From what she knew about the man so far, her aunt had probably given it to him and he had promptly stuffed it into one of his pockets, where he went and completely forgot about it.

Corey let out a faint huff of amusement, the corner of her mouth twitching upwards as she leaned back and flipped the top of the envelope open before she withdrew the folded sheets of paper from within. Yes, sheets. Plural. It looked like her aunt had made everyone write something as a kind of farewell. The girl chuckled softly as she shook her head; if her family reacted like this when she went away for a day or two, what were they going to do when she left home for good? Knowing them, they'd probably call every day or something like that.

Still chuckling quietly under her breath, Corey unfolded the first page and started to read. By the time she had finished the first paragraph her chuckle had died down as she straightened up in her seat, a small frown beginning to form on her lips while her eyebrows knitted together uncertainly. By the second paragraph, all of the color had drained from her face as her gray eyes darted back and forth across the page, hardly daring to believe what she was reading. When she reached the end of her aunt's letter – her aunt had been the first one to write to her – Corey's fingers were digging into the paper so hard that she was in serious danger of ripping the velvety-feeling watermarked sheet.

Pale-faced and shaking, the teen stared incredulously at the words in front of her as her breathing became harsh and ragged, like she had just run a marathon at top speed. This… this wasn't possible. Her family would never do something like this to her, never.

'_I'm so sorry, Corey, but it's all for the best. Just remember that we love you, and that we want the best for you. You deserve to not be forced to live in fear, wondering every day if you made the right choice to live for yourself.'_ All for the best? How could it be for the best if they were just abandoning her like this?

Hot, angry tears stung at the corners of the girl's eyes as her stomach lurched unpleasantly, making the words on the paper all blur together before she swiftly stuffed it back into the envelope. She hadn't even noticed the strangled sob that somehow managed to emerge from her throat until the Doctor turned away from his console to look at her. The guilty look that crossed his face the second that he saw the envelope clenched tightly in her hand told her everything that she needed to know.

For one moment, her entire line of sight went red.

"You son of a bitch," Corey hissed as she stood up, not even bothering to wipe away the angry tears that still stained her face. "You _fucking_ son of a bitch. You lied to me."

A look of concern crossed the Doctor's face as swiftly pulled back on a lever on the console, indicating that he wanted to land, before he reached out to place a comforting hand on the young human's shoulder. "Now Corey-"

"Don't you _dare_ try and patronize me," the girl snarled as she jerked away from the man's outstretched hand, her gray eyes burning with a convoluted mixture of barely-hidden pain and rage. "Why the hell didn't you tell me?"

Corey gritted her teeth together and sucked in a series of several breaths as she tried to get a grip on her rapidly fluctuating emotions, only to fail miserably. There really was no going back now. Her temper was well and truly lost by this point. Shouting was easier than crying too; people didn't think that you were weak when you yelled and swore at them. And right now, the one thing that she couldn't be was weak.

"After all, I don't think that it possibly crossed your mind that I might just possibly have a slight problem with the fact that once I crossed over into this reality that I can never go back home afterwards," she continued coldly, somehow managing to keep her voice at a reasonable pitch while blistering sarcasm dripped from her very words. "Did you even bother to think for one _damn_ second that maybe, just maybe, I actually _**wanted**_ to go home after this little adventure?"

With that, Corey grabbed her messenger bag and slung it over her shoulder before she stalked off towards the door leading out of the TARDIS. Right before she reached the door, the Doctor made the mistake of trying to grab her by the shoulder in an attempt to keep her from leaving. A furious snarl somehow managed to rip its way from the girl's throat as she pivoted around, her hand encircling his wrist before she pulled the Time Lord over her shoulder with far more strength than he thought possible for a girl of her stature, sending him crashing to the floor with the exact same move that she had used on Trey earlier.

All of the air in the Doctor's lungs left in a hurry as he lay there on the metal grating, completely winded. Corey didn't even look back at him as she swiftly wrenched the folding door open and stepped out into the world beyond it, shutting it behind her with a precise 'snap'.

There was a moment of brief hesitation before the Doctor heard the sound of someone running away from the TARDIS, the tread of their sneakers slapping against the pavement outside. By the time that he finally managed to lever himself up into a standing position and opened up the door to look out, Corey was nowhere in sight. A pained expression crossed his face as he sagged visibly against the doorframe, not knowing what to do.

He hadn't even been traveling with the girl for a full twenty-four hours, and already he had lost her.

* * *

Well, here we go. I finally got everything all written down. Man, school was absolute murder this semester.

So Corey gets to have an unusual experience, and then finds out the truth about her leaving home. It obviously does not go over well.

Everyone owes some seriously major thanks to the very awesome **Random Cheeses**, because without her and her fantastic advice, this chapter would not have been possible.


	6. Chapter 6: Something Left To Save

_Until you crash  
Until you burn  
Until you lie  
Until you learn  
Until you see  
Until you believe  
Until you fight  
Until you fall  
Until the end of everything at all  
Until you die  
Until you're alive_

Don't save me, don't save me, cuz I don't care  
Don't save me, don't save me, cuz  
I don't care

-**Savior** by 30 Seconds to Mars

"First law on holes – when you're in one, stop digging." – Denis Healey

**Chapter Six:**

**Something Left to Save**

_**Then:**_

"_You son of a bitch," Corey hissed as she stood up, not even bothering to wipe away the angry tears that still stained her face. "You _fucking_ son of a bitch. You lied to me."_

_A look of concern crossed the Doctor's face as swiftly pulled back on a lever on the console, indicating that he wanted to land, before he reached out to place a comforting hand on the young human's shoulder. "Now Corey-"_

"_Don't you _dare_ try and patronize me," the girl snarled as she jerked away from the man's outstretched hand, her gray eyes burning with a convoluted mixture of barely-hidden pain and rage. "Why the hell didn't you tell me?" _

_Corey gritted her teeth together and sucked in a series of several breaths as she tried to get a grip on her rapidly fluctuating emotions, only to fail miserably. There really was no going back now. Her temper was well and truly lost by this point. Shouting was easier than crying too; people didn't think that you were weak when you yelled and swore at them. And right now, the one thing that she couldn't be was weak._

"_After all, I don't think that it possibly crossed your mind that I might just possibly have a slight problem with the fact that once I crossed over into this reality that I can never go back home afterwards," she continued coldly, somehow managing to keep her voice at a reasonable pitch while blistering sarcasm dripped from her very words. "Did you even bother to think for one _damn _second that maybe, just maybe, I actually _**wanted**_ to go home after this little adventure?"_

_With that, Corey grabbed her messenger bag and slung it over her shoulder before she stalked off towards the door leading out of the TARDIS. Right before she reached the door, the Doctor made the mistake of trying to grab her by the shoulder in an attempt to keep her from leaving. A furious snarl somehow managed to rip its way from the girl's throat as she pivoted around, her hand encircling his wrist before she pulled the Time Lord over her shoulder with far more strength than he thought possible for a girl of her stature, sending him crashing to the floor with the exact same move that she had used on Trey earlier._

_All of the air in the Doctor's lungs left in a hurry as he lay there on the metal grating, completely winded. Corey didn't even look back at him as she swiftly wrenched the folding door open and stepped out into the world beyond it, shutting it behind her with a precise 'snap'._

_There was a moment of brief hesitation before the Doctor heard the sound of someone running away from the TARDIS, the tread of their sneakers slapping against the pavement outside. By the time that he finally managed to lever himself up into a standing position and opened up the door to look out, Corey was nowhere in sight. A pained expression crossed his face as he sagged visibly against the doorframe, not knowing what to do._

_He hadn't even been traveling with the girl for a full twenty-four hours, and already he had lost her._

_**Now:**_

She didn't know where she was, and right now she really didn't care. All she wanted to do was to get as far away from that thrice-damned blue Police Public Call Box and its stupid, lanky, idiotic alien owner as humanly possible.

Corey had stopped running after about three blocks, not wanting to attract any more attention to herself than she already had. After all, it was fairly hard to ignore a teenage girl in a hockey jersey running through the streets like the police were chasing after her. The girl chuckled humorlessly at that thought as she adjusted the shoulder strap on her messenger bag, keeping her eyes focused down on the gray concrete sidewalk beneath her feet.

Wouldn't that just be perfect for her to get in trouble with the police, on top of the already tremendously crappy day that she'd already had so far?

The only good thing that she had going for her right now was the fact that she was in a city, hopefully on Earth, if all of the people surging around her were any indication. Corey sighed as she looked around her, unintentionally raising an eyebrow when she heard the odd accents that twisted their way through the people's words as they spoke. The accents around her sounded almost… Scottish, but not really. They also sounded kind of British, but that wasn't right either. The girl shrugged noncommittally as she continued to make her way through the crowd, occasionally scanning the people around her for a certain eccentric Time Lord so she'd hopefully have enough time to bolt before he reached her. At least they spoke English here.

If they hadn't, she'd be sunk. She barely knew enough French to make herself understood – hello, goodbye, good morning, good evening, please, thank you, and where's the toilet/hotel/bookstore/school were hardly an entire conversation – much less survive in a strange place. And all of the German and Russian that she knew consisted solely of obscenities and insults. Somehow, she didn't really think that any of those particular phrases would go over very well with the locals.

A chilly breeze gusted through the crowd, and Corey shivered as she stuffed her hands into her pockets automatically. She loved her hockey jersey dearly, but it wasn't exactly something that was suited for running around in without a jacket. The girl shivered again as she wrapped her fingers protectively around the strap of her messenger bag, forcing herself to remain calm as she waded through the people around her.

Right now, all she wanted to do was run, and just keep on running until she dropped from exhaustion somewhere. Maybe if she kept running long enough, she'd be able to escape from the continued tightening of her throat, the heavy, leaden feeling in her stomach, and the painful burning in her lungs as she fought tooth and nail not to start sobbing right then and there. She was not going to cry! Not here, not where there were hundreds of people to witness her tears, and then lead to some kind-hearted soul thinking that they were doing a good deed when they approached her and gently asked if she was alright.

The girl managed to break free of the crowds on the street long enough to spot a desolate-looking white pillar – probably a monument of some kind – that had somehow been combined with water to create a large fountain that was across the street. Behind the monument was a large bay, and for one moment the overwhelming briny smell of the sea flooded her nose. For all intents and purposes, the little area seemed to be deserted enough, and no one was probably going to bother her there for a while.

Briefly adjusting her grip on her bag, Corey ducked around someone and headed across the street, pausing briefly in front of the fountain to look at it before she proceeded to flop down against a large cement block that was roughly about four feet high and equally wide, effectively hidden from anyone passing by on the street.

She sat there in silence for several seconds, ignoring the cold seeping through her jeans from the concrete below her, before tears started to stream down her face. Corey tried to remain silent for a long as she could, not wanting to attract attention with her sobbing, before she was forced to pull her knees up to her chest and fold her arms on top, burying her face the loose fabric of her jersey as she started to weep brokenly.

In just a few short hours she had been chased down by a bunch of aliens who were trying to invade her reality, found out that her best friend had been killed, set fire to her university science lab, willingly allowed herself to be kidnapped by a man that she didn't even know, had almost gotten eaten by a blue giraffe _thing_, and then found out that she had no home to return to. Right now, all she wanted to do was go _home_. She didn't want this, any of this. What good was action and adventure if you didn't have someone to share it with? What was the point of her being able to go and see things that no human had ever seen before if she couldn't return home at the end and tell her family all about it?

Rage welled up within Corey as she whipped her head up to glare venomously at the waterfall in front of her, her breath coming in short, harsh gasps through dangerously clenched teeth even as tears still streamed down her face. This was all her fault! If she hadn't been an idiot in the first place, if she hadn't gone looking for her notes then the Doctor would have waltzed right in and out of her life without notice. And she had been the one who had said yes when he asked her to come with him. She should have refused, should have told him no!

Instead, she just went along with whatever he had suggested, like a naïve little idiot. And to make things worse, her family had encouraged her to go. She was such a moron sometimes!

Letting out a low snarl of frustration, Corey aimed a vicious kick at her hapless messenger bag that was lying at her feet, sending it skidding several feet away from her before coming to a stop in front of the monument. She stared at it listlessly for a few moments, waiting for her anger to fade enough that she no longer felt like punching someone's face in, or crying her eyes out again, before she got to her feet and slowly trudged over towards where her bag lay. She really did not need her bag to get wet on top of everything else right now.

The girl came to a stop right in front of where the messenger bag sat before she crouched down and picked up the strap. It was at that moment that the slab of pavement that she was crouched down on suddenly started sinking downwards. Corey let out a loud yelp and shot up out of the small pit that she was suddenly standing in before she scrambled backwards and onto the very much solid concrete behind her.

The slab of pavement continued to descend steadily, and within moments there was nothing but a large, gaping pit the size of a piece of concrete right at the base of the monument/waterfall. Corey stared incredulously at the hole with wide eyes as she slowly edged up to the hole and carefully peered down. It went down for quite a ways, although it looked like there was a faint light at the bottom. Whatever it was, there was definitely something down there.

For one moment, Corey felt the nagging hint of curiosity as she peered down into the dark pit before she took a step back and shook her head. No, no more. Not now, not ever. Her curiosity had already landed her in hot water enough for today. There was no way that she was about to start actively go looking for trouble.

With that thought in mind, she quickly turned around and hurried away from the monument, pausing only long enough to note the sign that identified it as Roald Dhal Plass, before she disappeared back into the crowds of people walking the streets.

* * *

When the girl had first approached the Hub, Jack had been manning the security cameras, and after taking one look at her – seriously, who wandered around Cardiff in October while wearing a hockey jersey? – had dismissed her as a mere tourist just out and about, seeing the sights of Cardiff. When she had flopped down behind one of the large blocks in front of the Hub, staring intently at the building, he had been slightly concerned. Still, she was just a kid, so she wouldn't be that hard to deal with. However, when she had put her head down on her arms and started sobbing, he had relaxed slightly.

She was just a kid having a bad day, and she had been looking for someplace private to have a good cry. Knowing how kids were, she'd probably had an argument with her parents or something like that. Or maybe, seeing as she was a tourist, she'd gotten some bad news from home.

He didn't really pay any attention to the kid when she lost her temper and kicked her bag, sending it skidding away from her. What really caught Jack's attention was when the girl got up to retrieve her bag.

The lift down to Torchwood had activated when she had stepped on it.

Immediately, Jack had spun around to face the computer screen as he watched in a kind of stunned horror as the lift started to descend while the girl was standing on it. To his surprise, the girl had immediately scrambled off of the lift and back onto solid ground, staring shakily at the hole that it had left behind. And then she had stood up and looked down inside the lift shaft for a few moments before she backed up and took off.

Jack sat there for a few moments, trying to force his stunned brain to work, before something hit him. She had been able to see the lift. Somehow the perception filter had not worked at all on this strange girl. It was about that same moment that he noticed that one of the sensors that was on the lift had gone haywire. He frowned slightly as he peered at the flashing gauge on the computer screen, and then paled.

Somehow, this girl had set off the sensor that detected Void particles.

The Torchwood head cursed loudly as he shot out of his seat and grabbed his jacket, heading for the exit from the Hub as he did so. He needed to find this girl before she told someone what she had seen, and he needed to figure out why the perception filter hadn't worked on her. And those were the least of his worries for the moment.

* * *

Corey shivered as a cold gust of wind whipped through the streets, and pretty much went straight through her clothes. Hockey jerseys were known for their breathability, not for retaining heat, and the weather outside was just getting worse. What had started out as a chilly and gray day was slowly turning into a freezing and stormy afternoon.

For a moment her mind drifted back to what had occurred at the Plass before she forcefully shoved it out of her head. She needed to focus on the situation at hand, not worry about weird secret passages at some kind of monument.

First of all, she knew that she had a change of clothes in her bag, so she needed to find someplace with a bathroom that she could slip into and change into some warmer clothing. Secondly, she needed to find out just where she was. Obviously she was somewhere in the U.K., but beyond that she had no clue whatsoever. Corey's stomach decided to let out a low growl at that exact moment, pointing out rather insistently that she hadn't had anything to eat since lunchtime.

Which had been several hours ago.

"Great," the teen grumbled under her breath as she rolled her eyes upwards. Just what she needed.

Another gust of frigid wind blew through the street, and Corey shivered visibly as she ducked her head slightly in an attempt to block out some of the cold from her face and neck. She couldn't take much more of this. It wasn't that she had a problem with the cold or anything like that, seeing as she had grown up in Michigan and Wisconsin, but usually she was appropriately bundled up in weather like this.

Thunder rolled out from the gray clouds hanging overhead in a low, menacing rumble, and the girl looked up at them, frowning slightly. A single cold raindrop landed right on her upturned face, and her eyes widened slightly. She recognized this kind of weather.

"Crap."

Without further ado, Corey looked around and spotted a small restaurant that apparently sold fish and chips before she hurriedly ducked inside. Within a minute after her entrance of the place, a steady downpour was taking place outside, and people were either hurrying to get to shelter, or pulling out umbrellas and holding them over their heads. The teen watched the rain outside for a few seconds in a kind of listless interest before she turned around and headed off towards the sign at the back of the restaurant that proudly proclaimed the location to the bathrooms.

Her change of clothes consisted of a green flannel overshirt – again, it had once belonged to her dad when he was younger – and a black long-sleeved shirt, as well as a clean pair of jeans. Corey quickly shucked off her hockey jersey and the black t-shirt that she still had on underneath, before she stuffed the jersey into her messenger bag, followed shortly by her now very grimy and beat-up jeans once she had kicked off her tennis shoes. Within seconds, she had on a pair of clean and slightly stiff, dark-wash blue jeans and the fitted black long-sleeve shirt.

The girl paused for a second to relish the feeling of clean clothes as she slipped her sneakers on again before she glanced over at the flannel overshirt and the discarded t-shirt still hanging on the hook of the door to the bathroom stall that she was occupying. She didn't have a jacket on her, which she was really regretting right now, so layering was probably her best bet.

With that thought, Corey quickly shrugged on the t-shirt over her long-sleeve, and then pulled on the flannel overshirt, leaving the front unbuttoned for the time being. She could easily button it up once she went outside again. The girl let out a long sigh as she reached up and raked a hand though her bangs before she grabbed her messenger bag and exited the bathroom stall. She paused in front of the mirror over the sink and quickly ran her hands through her hair in an attempt to neaten it up at least a little.

For some reason, Corey's hair never stayed neat for any length of time, and it was next to impossible to style without an obscene amount of hairspray. Her aunt had always blamed the fact that her hair was pin straight, and almost baby-fine. As a result, Corey almost always wore her hair down, or pulled back into a ponytail or simple braid. It was just easier to deal with that way.

Corey frowned slightly as she stared at her reflection to make sure that she was presentable before she reached underneath her shirt and pulled out the small brass pendant that she wore almost all the time underneath. It had been a gift from Tessa for her fourteenth birthday, and anyone who didn't know about the TV show _Supernatural_ wouldn't have had a clue as to what it was. It was a brass replica of the same pendant that one of the main characters wore around his neck, right down to the twisted leather cord that it was strung on, and it looked like a face of some kind of man with cow horns sticking out of the sides of his head. Most of the time Corey wore it underneath her shirt to prevent awkward questions from her classmates, but she figured that it wouldn't really matter here. Besides, it was too cold to have a small lump of metal resting right next to her skin.

With one last glance at the mirror to make sure that she hadn't missed anything, Corey slung her messenger bag over her shoulder and exited the bathroom. As soon as she saw the torrential downpour that was still taking place outside, she knew that she wasn't going to be leaving the little fish and chips place any time soon. Not that that was a bad thing at the moment though. She was absolutely starving, and the fried fish and French fries – why the English called them chips was beyond her – were really starting to smell good.

After a quick check of the contents of her wallet, she figured that she had enough to get a combo meal. It wasn't like she had anywhere else to be, so she could take her time eating. With that thought in mind, Corey stepped into the small line at the counter, briefly glancing up at the brightly-lit menu overhead long enough to figure out what she wanted.

"What do you want?" the bored-looking man behind the register asked flatly when it was her turn to order. Corey glanced up at the menu one more time before she spoke.

"I'll have the Number 3 please," she said, and noticed the almost minute narrowing of the man's eyes when he heard her blatantly American accent. He punched in the number for her order, and then rang up the total.

"That'll be 3.50," the cashier intoned. Corey pulled out a five from her wallet and handed it to the man. He stared at it for a second before the bored look on his face transformed into a slightly haughty sneer, and he scornfully handed the bill back to her.

"Sorry, but we don't accept American money here," he stated stiffly as he peered down his nose at her. Corey flinched at the implied 'you arrogant idiot' that drifted menacingly in the air after his words, and quickly stuffed the bill into the pocket of her jeans, her cheeks burning with shame as she heard several of the people behind her start to chatter excitedly at the fuss that was taking place. "Besides, the price is three _pounds_, not three dollars. Even if you did have the right currency, it wouldn't be enough-"

Suddenly, the man who had been waiting in line behind her stepped in front of her and slapped down some money in front of the cashier, abruptly cutting off his scornful mocking.

"Just combine her order with mine then," he said in a manner that indicated that it wouldn't be a very smart idea to say 'no'. The cashier paled slightly, but nodded in acceptance before he took the man's order as well.

Corey's jaw dropped as she gaped up at dark-haired man in shock before he turned around and flashed her a reassuring grin.

"Never argue with someone who gets paid minimum wage," he quipped as he jerked his thumb over his shoulder to indicate at the now sour-faced cashier. Corey blinked in surprise before she shook her head slightly and moved out of the way so that the people behind her weren't being blocked.

"Um, thank you," she muttered uncertainly, an embarrassed flush causing her cheeks to burn as she averted her gaze slightly. "You… you didn't have to do that."

"Sure, I didn't _have_ to," the man drawled with a roguish grin that for some reason reminded her faintly of Dean. "But I wanted to." He straightened up and frowned slightly as he glanced over at the cashier, who looked like he was sulking as he took someone's order, before he stuffed his hands into the pockets of the navy wool greatcoat that he was wearing. "Besides, he had no right to treat you like that. Sure, you made a mistake, but everyone does that occasionally. Nobody's perfect. And if we were, then life would be very boring."

Corey couldn't help it; she smiled. There was just something about this guy that was very friendly and made him easy to talk to. It didn't hurt that he also sounded American, which was a very welcome thing after the massive stink-eye that she had just been given by the cashier. It was something familiar, and Corey welcomed it.

"You sound as though you speak from experience," she teased. He cocked an eyebrow in response.

"And you sound like you're far from home," he pointed out before he frowned thoughtfully. "I'm gonna guess… American Midwest?"

"Actually, I'm from Michigan originally, but I've lived in Wisconsin for the past five years," Corey admitted with a slight grin. "You were close though. I'm just a bit farther north. If you had said the Great Lakes area though, then you would have nailed it."

The number for the combined order was called up, and the man quickly stepped up to retrieve it before he handed her the fish and chips combo that she had ordered.

"I'm Jack Harkness, by the way," he said. "And you are?"

Corey hesitated for a moment, uncertain as to whether or not she could trust this guy. After all, her track record for trusting people today downright sucked, and she didn't even know him from Adam. But, she was in a public place, so if he did anything funny she'd at least be able to get some help.

"Corey Matthews."

"Well then, Corey Matthews, I don't suppose that you would like to join me-" Jack held up his own basket of fish and chips for emphasis before he gestured loosely over towards a booth that was right next to one of the rain-fogged windows "- for lunch over there. To be honest, I'm rather curious to know how a girl from Wisconsin ended up here in Cardiff, Wales."

Corey's eyebrows arched upwards slightly upon hearing this particular piece of information, but somehow managed to keep her expression neutral. So she was in Wales right now? For a girl who hadn't even been to Canada, much less any farther away from her home than a state or two, that was some heavy-duty traveling right there.

"Well, it's kind of a long and annoying story," she hedged as she took a seat on one of the hard wooden benches before she snatched up one of the steaming fries and bit into it. She almost groaned in delight at the firm crunch, accompanied by the taste of a perfectly cooked potato that wasn't too greasy and had only a little bit of salt on it. "Oh man, these are awesome."

"First time you've ever had real fish and chips?" Jack asked, obviously amused with her actions as he smiled. Corey flashed him a little grin in response as she bit into another fry.

"What gave me away?"

"That probably would have been the euphoric look on your face when you bit into your chip."

Corey cocked an eyebrow before she shrugged slightly and picked up a large piece of battered and fried cod, staring at it thoughtfully for a moment before she bit into it. She was pleasantly surprised; it tasted nothing like the processed fish sticks from back home. Actually, it was really good. The girl grinned before she took another bite.

"You're supposed to put vinegar on it first," Jack pointed out as he held up a small bottle of amber-colored vinegar that had been sitting on the side of the table meaningfully. Corey shot him a wry look as she swallowed her mouthful of hot fish.

"But what if I like it plain?" she asked once she wasn't in danger of showing the older man a mouthful of masticated food. The knowing smirk that he gave her in response made her want to groan in exasperation.

"Have you ever tried it with vinegar?"

"No."

"Then how do you know that you don't like it?"

"Because I'm just that good?"

Jack just laughed as he dangled the little bottle of malt vinegar right in Corey's face, grinning widely when she jerked away slightly and shot the small glass bottle an offended look.

"Here, I'll make you a deal," he offered suddenly. "You try the vinegar on one of your fish pieces, and I'll leave you alone about it."

Corey gave him a flat look before she held out her hand expectantly, and Jack set the bottle of vinegar down in her palm. The girl gripped it tightly before she upended it over her half-eaten piece of fish and allowed a thin stream of amber-colored liquid to dribble onto the piece of cod before she quickly righted it and set it back down at the end of the table. She stared at her now-defiled piece of fish for a second before she picked it up and bit into the end that she had put vinegar on. Jack watched her intently as she chewed thoughtfully for a few moments before swallowing.

"Eh, not bad," she finally admitted with a shrug after drawing out the somewhat tense silence for as long as possible. "I still like it better plain though."

Jack rolled his eyes upwards as he gave an exaggerated sigh of disappointment. "You have no appreciation for the finer things in life."

"Hey, dude, you're talking to the girl who eats her French fries without ketchup on a regular basis," Corey pointed out with a chuckle as she jabbed a fry in the older man's direction. The look of complete and absolute bewilderment that Jack gave her in response almost made her burst out laughing.

"Why?"

"Because I'm weird like that."

A relaxed silence fell between the two of them after that, and Corey used that time to utterly demolish her basket of fish and chips. Jack watched her with obvious interest as the teen pushed the empty paper-lined plastic basket away from her and leaned back against the padded backrest of the booth with a content sigh. He picked at his own food for a few more minutes, attempting to finish off the half-eaten remains of his own meal before he finally gave up and pushed his basket off to the side.

"So," he began hesitantly. "How does a girl like you go from Wisconsin to Wales?"

Corey straightened up slightly at the question, and she couldn't prevent the startled expression that flickered across her face before she forced herself to assume a nonchalant mask.

"Oh, just… stuff," she finally muttered, unable to keep back the note of irritation that entered her voice as she remembered everything that had happened before she had agreed to go with the Doctor. Besides, how on earth could she convey what had happened to her within the past twenty-four hours without sounding absolutely insane? "I… I kind of had an argument with… someone that I know."

There. That was close enough to the truth, and just ambiguous enough to avoid too many awkward questions.

Jack arched an eyebrow as he leaned forward slightly, looking interested. "Boyfriend?"

Corey couldn't help the look of indignant disgust that crossed her face as she visibly recoiled at the suggestion.

"Oh, hell no!" she exploded as she shook her head vehemently. "Never in a million freaking years!"

The older man looked slightly taken aback by her objection, and blinked in surprise before he shook his head. A look of dawning understanding crossed his face, and he gave her a wry little smile.

"Ah, family issues then," he said before he let out a sigh. Corey shook her head in response as she rubbed the back of her neck uncertainly.

"No, not exactly," she admitted reluctantly before she glanced out the window off to her right, watching the rain still pouring down outside thoughtfully. "It's just… it's complicated. And annoying, and… agh, I don't even know where to begin. Every time I try to think about it, my brain starts threatening me with mutiny and spontaneous combustion."

Jack looked amused by her rather frustrated description as the girl reached up and started to massage the bridge of her nose, her eyes sliding shut as she let out an irritated sigh. Once she seemed to have regained some semblance of calm, Corey straightened up and opened her eyes before she glanced offhandedly out at the dismal weather on the other side of the window. Something outside caught her attention, and she quickly did a double-take before all of the color drained from her face.

"Oh, you have got to be _shitting_ me," she whispered hoarsely as she stared incredulously at the familiar lanky figure that was standing outside on the curb opposite to them, holding a small glowing blue light in his hand as he looked down at it. How in the hell had the Doctor followed her?

Corey forced herself to try and remain calm as she looked out the window, ignoring the slightly concerned look that Jack was giving her. As long as the Doctor was outside, she'd be okay. He was across the street, and visibility was pretty much crap when someone was out in the rain like that, so he probably wouldn't see her.

However, the Doctor decided to blow that assumption right out of the water when he held the sonic screwdriver out in front of him and started to stride across the street. Corey's eyes widened, and she let a soft profanity fall from her lips as she fought back the urge to start banging her head against the table. It wouldn't do anything to help matters, but it would feel _so_ good once she stopped.

"What's wrong?" Jack asked, and Corey looked up at him with wide eyes. Approximately two seconds after that an idea came to her, and as juvenile as it was, she decided to go with it.

"Um, look, if someone comes in here looking for me, you don't know me, okay?" she said hurriedly before she stuffed her messenger bag under the table, and then quickly ducked under after it. She heard Jack's confused 'huh?' in response to her abrupt disappearance as she pressed herself up against the wall below the window, and inwardly sighed. She was going to have to do some heavy-duty explaining once the Doctor left.

Fortunately the booth that they had been sitting at was one of those four-person booths, so Corey didn't look like a complete and total retard in her attempt to hide. The girl held her messenger bag securely in her lap as she pulled her legs up to her chest and kept her head down. Her paranoia became reality about a minute later when the door to the chip shop swung open, accompanied by the sound of pouring rain and the scent of a wet October afternoon, with just a touch of the ocean thrown in to spice things up.

What Corey hadn't expected was the name that came out of the Doctor's mouth after he had completely entered the small chip shop and looked around a bit.

"Jack?"

Corey froze. Oh crap.

"Doctor? What are you doing here?"

No, crap did not even _begin_ to describe how much trouble she was in. Shit was probably more appropriate, or maybe even the f-bomb.

Corey bit down on her lip in an effort to prevent herself from cussing up a storm as the Doctor came to a stop in front of their table. From what she could see, which pretty much consisted of everything from the knees down, he looked absolutely soaked. Water was dripping liberally off of his trench coat and pooling around his equally damp-looking Converse, and there were streaks of wet sand on his pant legs.

The girl frowned slightly as she slowly tilted her head to the side. Why was the Doctor so wet? He looked like he had gotten on the wrong end of a swamp monster or something.

She heard the Doctor let out a long sigh before he gracelessly sat down in the seat across from Jack, forcing Corey to press herself even closer to the wall to avoid from being kicked. She silently thanked whatever celestial beings that might happen to be in the area for the fact that the table was fairly wide.

"I'm looking for someone," the Time Lord admitted wearily. Jack gave a sardonic-sounding snort as he leaned back slightly in his seat.

"What, looking for another companion?" he said sarcastically. The Doctor frowned as he shot the other man a somewhat annoyed look before he let out another sigh and propped his elbows up on the table, resting his forehead in the palms of his hands as he stared intently at the scarred laminate tabletop.

"No, not exactly," the Doctor said, his shoulders slumped wearily in defeat. "I picked up a new one in Green Bay, Wisconsin. She's a college student, fairly young, but she looks even younger. She got upset because I didn't tell her the truth about something, and she ran off as soon as I landed the TARDIS here."

Jack stiffened up immediately as soon as he heard the word 'Wisconsin', and Corey bit down on the thick flannel fabric of her shirtsleeve so she wouldn't groan aloud. She was so screwed.

"What's her name?" Jack asked nonchalantly, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the girl in question was now very quietly freaking out by his feet.

"Corey. Her name's Corey Matthews," the Doctor responded dully as he looked up at the Torchwood head. "She's seventeen." There was another awkward pause before he spoke again, and when he did, Corey felt her stomach begin a free-fall right to the floor. "Jack, she's not from around here."

"You already said that she was American, so I kind of figured that," the dark-haired man drawled easily. The Time Lord shot him an annoyed glance before he shook his head.

"No, I don't mean like that," he insisted as he straightened up.

"Oh? And where is she from then?"

"She's… she's from a different reality."

If it had been at all possible for Corey to get away with repeatedly banging her head against the wall behind her, she would have done it in a heartbeat. Of course her luck was that bad! Somehow, she had struck up a reasonably friendly conversation with a friend of the one person that she wanted to avoid. Did the universe really hate her _that_ much?

A tense silence descended between the two men, and Corey shivered slightly. What on earth was going on? The way the Doctor had said that, it sounded almost like… she wasn't the first person to come here through another reality. But if that was the case, then why in the heck hadn't the Doctor said something?

"Was it Rose's-?" Jack began, only to be cut off by an abrupt shake of the Time Lord's head.

"No, completely different one," he said flatly as he ran a hand though his messy and soaking hair agitatedly. "Everything there… it was different. It was… _normal_, if any reality could ever be called that. All of the things here – you, me, aliens, Torchwood, Unit, everything – it didn't exist. It was just a plain, ordinary world full of plain, ordinary people."

"And you decided to drag one of those plain, ordinary people along with you on one of your adventures," Jack retorted sarcastically as he leveled a glare at the other man. His eyes widened slightly as he stared at the Doctor for a few seconds as realization hit him, and he suddenly reached across the table and grabbed him by the front of his suit, roughly pulling the Time Lord close to his face. "You stupid-! Are you telling me that you took some poor kid away from her family without even telling her that she'd never be able to go back once she went with you?"

The Doctor stared in his eyes for a moment before he looked away. He nodded once in agreement to the Torchwood head's statement, and Jack gaped at him incredulously as he released the other man's suit and slowly sat back down.

"I told her family, but I left it up to them to tell her. They made the decision to write some letters explaining what was happening, and put them in an envelope. They gave the envelope to me, and I put it in my pocket." The Doctor trailed off as he gave a half-hearted shrug. "Figured that I'd give it to Corey once everything had calmed down a bit."

A dark eyebrow slowly rose upwards as Jack stared steadily at the older man before he shook his head and sighed.

"She found the envelope, didn't she?"

The Doctor nodded wordlessly in response before he let out a soft noise of frustration.

"Why do they always run off?" he asked quietly. A brief flicker of annoyance crossed his face as he stared intently down at the top of the table. "Humans."

At that point Corey decided that she'd had enough. It was cramped under the table, and it smelled funny. Not to mention the fact that she was tired of avoiding being kicked in the face. All of the anger that she had been feeling earlier had faded to a more manageable level. Besides, it wasn't worth all of the time and energy that nursing a grudge would take, and she was exhausted.

And while she hated to admit it, she really didn't have any other choice.

"Normally, I would take offense to that comment, but I'll just chalk it up to you being cranky," she said in an offhanded manner, and smirked inwardly when both men jumped at the sound of her voice. Without even waiting for a response, she managed to extract herself from the cramped darkness from under the table, squirming into the seat next to Jack.

The absolutely flabbergasted look on the Doctor's face as he gaped at her was priceless.

"What?" he stammered indignantly, his brown eyes wide as shock slowly turned to indignation. "What? _What?_"

Corey let out a long sigh as she rolled her eyes.

"Yes, I was here the entire time, and yes, I heard the whole thing," she remarked pointedly as she leaned back in her seat and crossed her arms over her chest, leveling a steady gaze at the still-speechless Time Lord. "You may have had your reasons for why you brought me here, and I understand that, but that still leaves the fact that you lied to me. I do not like people lying to me. In fact, I'm still pretty pissed about that. But you had a reason." Gray eyes narrowed slightly as the girl straightened up in her seat. "So tell me why."

The Doctor fixed Corey with a long, and slightly stern look, as he fiddled absent-mindedly with his sonic screwdriver.

"We're going to have to do that later," he pointed out as he gestured out at the people occupying the chip shop. More than one person was glancing frequently in their direction, and it was blatantly obvious that several of them were trying to eavesdrop. "Your little stunt attracted more than a little bit of attention. It's not safe to talk here."

The flat, disbelieving stare that Corey favored the older man with could have decimated nations.

"You want me to come with you?" she whispered incredulously before a slightly hostile expression crossed her face and she jabbed an accusatory finger right into his face. "Dude, if you're waiting for Stockholm syndrome to kick in, then you're in for a long night."

"What?"

"You freaking _kidnapped_ me!" the girl hissed angrily. "If you think that I'm going anywhere alone with you, then you're even crazier than I thought!"

Apparently Jack had had enough of their arguing, because he chose that moment to intercede on the Doctor's behalf.

"But you won't be alone," he said pointedly. Corey rolled her eyes as she gave a disbelieving snort before she fixed the man with a skeptical look. She opened her mouth to fire off a retort, only to stop when she caught sight of some of the people staring at them. She shut her mouth with an audible 'click' before she shook her head and dragged a hand down her face.

"Sonofabitch," she hissed through gritted teeth before she stood up and exited the booth, shouldering her bag as she went. "Fine, we'll do it your way." Corey stopped for a second as she fixed the Doctor with a stern look and pointed at him. "But I'm telling you right now, you better have a damn good explanation for what you pulled."

Jack didn't roll his eyes, but it was a very near thing as he gently escorted the offended teen towards the front door, with the Doctor following along behind them.

"Trust me kid," he said in a tone that could only be called one of resigned patience, "with the Doctor, he _always_ has a reason."

Corey merely turned around and stared at the two men stonily in response, her eyes narrowed slightly even as she fought to keep back whatever biting retort that came to mind. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that she was not a happy camper. Jack mentally cringed at the thought of dealing with a pissed-off adolescent, and the massive explanation that they had to look forward to.

This was not going to be fun, for any of them.

* * *

Yay, I'm back from the dead! Sorry for the delay, but life and school interfered.

It's the beginning of a _wonderful_ new semester at my university (note the sarcasm here), and I am enrolled in the Art program. So, updates might be a bit more sporadic until I get used to my schedule.

Thank you everyone who reviewed, and I hope that you enjoy this chapter as well. And, for anyone who does not know, Corey has another set of adventures up called _Far From Over_. Basically, they're a bunch of somewhat non-linear one-shots that cross over with _Supernatural_, and Corey's fun encounters with the weird. Sarcasm, humor, and the usual hijinks abound. They all take place after Corey gets used to being around the Doctor.


End file.
